Family slams 'unconscionable' actions of TD Bank after 95-year-old woman withdraws $10K in scam
CTV
The family of a 95-year-old Ontario woman tricked into withdrawing $10,000 in the middle of a major snowstorm said it's 'absolutely unconscionable' that bank employees allowed her to take out the money without contacting her power of attorney.
The family of a 95-year-old Ontario woman tricked into withdrawing $10,000 in the middle of a major snowstorm said it's “absolutely unconscionable" that bank employees allowed her to take out the money without contacting her power of attorney.
On a late January day, Elise received approximately seven phone calls to her Burlington, Ont., home.
Her only grandson had been arrested for a drug offence and needed $10,000 to cover bail, the caller explained to Elise, whom CTV News Toronto has agreed to refer to by pseudonym at the request of her family.
A winter storm that saw some parts of southern Ontario get up to 20 cm of snow had just begun to hit Burlington, but the 95-year-old wanted to help her grandson, her family told CTV News Toronto, and so she did what they instructed her.
“It’s disgraceful,” Bernie Mueller, Elise’s son, told CTV News Toronto.
Mueller said he had previously explained to his mother the nature of “grandparent scams,” yet, in the heat of the moment, the senior was overcome with emotion, he said, and ultimately was able to be victimized.
“Folks may talk to elderly people in their family about the scam, but the skill level of these criminals is such that it doesn't even matter,” Mueller said. “They just know what to say, how to say it, and what to do to make sure that the individual they're preying upon operates strictly on the emotion of wanting to help a family member in trouble.”
