A new lawsuit accuses a major US bank of failing to protect an elderly customer from being scammed out of his life savings.
The civil complaint, filed in the Superior Court of New Jersey, says that the PNC Bank should have noticed red-flags and prevented 76-year-old retiree Jeffrey Maas from falling victim to a con.
According to the lawsuit, Maas lost $390,000 after becoming the target of a well-known “phantom hacker/courier” scam.
The scam all began when Maas received a phony email alerting him to a charge of $691.85 for “Norton Antivirus.” Maas, concerned over the charge he didn’t make, called a number in the email and began talking to the scammers.
They eventually convinced Maas that a large sum of money was mistakenly deposited in his account and he needed to fix the error by purchasing gold coins by wiring funds from his bank account to a metals dealer and then handing off those coins to couriers. The scammers posed as PayPal and PNC Bank representatives.
The lawsuit says that PNC Bank employees should have noticed something was amiss when Maas made two large and unusual wire transfers on consecutive days. The lawsuit also says that the PNC Bank employees should have realized Maas was a likely victim of a scam when he remained on his cellphone with the criminals when arranging the transfers inside the bank.
The American Coin and Stamp Company, a New Jersey precious metals dealer, is also accused of negligence in the lawsuit for selling Maas $390,000 worth of gold over two days without asking him any relevant questions to assess if he was being scammed.
Says Maas’ attorney, Steve Cohen, a partner at Pollock Cohen LLP,
“Banks and precious-metal dealers are legally required to help detect and prevent this kind of elder financial exploitation. Their failure to abide by New Jersey’s elder protection laws and the federal government’s guidelines enables scams like this to happen.”
One of the alleged scammers, Jaynesh Patel, is another defendant in the lawsuit, having been arrested after Maas provided photos to the police of one of the courier’s vehicles, according to the lawsuit. Patel has been indicted on charges of conspiracy and theft by deception in the second degree.
The lawsuit seeks to have Maas’ stolen funds restored.
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