An 86-year-old woman from Lima was scammed out of $165,000, and now her family is speaking out.
Kathy O’Neil, the niece of the woman who was scammed, is now warning others to make sure the proper financial documents are in place for their elderly loved ones.
“Had we known that this was not in place at the time,” says O’Neil, “a lot of this, well most of it--it would have been avoided.”
O’Neil’s aunt had been targeted by a string of scams which led her to unknowingly send cashier's checks to criminals all around the country. The woman’s family had previously filled out paperwork to assign trustees and Power of Attorney, but the woman never filed them.
“She said she had all of this done. We even went through the co-trustee documents, and she said she had filed them,” says O’Neil.
Her aunt was going to a national bank that has a branch here in Lima, and not one employee flagged the transactions or reported the abuse to authorities—something they are legally responsible to do according to crime victim services.
O’Neil says, “My aunt went and withdrew $165,000 within a 10-day period, and there was never one bit of reporting from this bank.”
While the bank should have been looking out for the suspicious activity, it was another agency who caught on to the scams and sent out a report. UPS had noticed the woman coming in and frequently sending large checks.
O’Neil was then contacted by a Crime Victim Services agency after nearly two weeks of her aunt sending money out and says she was lucky to get that call. Since then, the family has started keeping a constant watch on the woman and have managed to get some of her money back from the bank.
The woman has also been diagnosed with dementia, which explains how the scammers managed to take advantage of her.
O’Neil wants to warn everyone to make sure their loved one's financial situation is secure before things get too far. “Make sure that they have the documents in place and that you have the documents in place,” she says. “Do not take their word for it, follow up, and call the financial institutions, make sure that your POAs are in place, make sure that your co-trustees or trustee documents are in place and filed with those financial institutions.”
