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Wells Fargo Fraud Lawsuit Overview:
- Who: Mary Linda Livingston lodged a lawsuit against Wells Fargo & Company.
- Why: Livingston alleges Wells Fargo allowed her to transfer hundreds of thousands to a con artist before alerting her to the fraud.
- Where: The lawsuit was filed in Philadelphia county court.
Wells Fargo failed to protect an elderly long-time customer from sending approximately $450,000 to criminals in a fraud scheme, a new lawsuit alleges.
Plaintiff Mary Linda Livingston claims Wells Fargo looked on as she made several transfers amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars before telling her the deals were likely a scam. Now, she says Wells Fargo will not reimburse her for the money she wired to fraudsters. She accuses the bank of failing to protect her funds and detect and prevent financial crimes.
Wells Fargo Customer Loses Life Savings to Fraud
Livingston says the Wells Fargo fraud began after she responded to an email from someone purporting to be from Microsoft, which set off a series of events that ended in her wire-transferring $450,000 to the Bank of Bangkok in nine separate transactions of $50,000 increments.
“Despite Wells Fargo having years of transaction records for Ms. Livingston, it still failed to identify and protect her from the fraud when it was clear that her bank accounts showed extremely irregular banking activity,” states the lawsuit.
The fraudster was able to gain access to Livingston’s online Wells Fargo account by having her login, and proceeded to change her password, attempt a Zelle money-transfer, and transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars from her savings account to her checking account, all without her consent, according to the lawsuit.
Livingston claims the fraudster tricked her into believing her Wells Fargo checking account contained funds that belonged to Microsoft and threatened to hold her account ransom unless she wired the funds back to the company.
Under duress, the plaintiff made five different $50,000 transactions to the Bank of Bangkok, per the fraudsters instruction, at two separate Wells Fargo locations in a “very short period of time,” says the lawsuit.
Livingston claims at no time during any of the five transactions or before did any Wells Fargo employee or representative take any action to halt the wire transfers or protect her from fraudulent activity related to her online account actions. Indeed, it wasn’t until Livingston tried to make a sixth transfer that a Wells Fargo employee finally alerted her to the fraud.
“Despite the extremely irregular transfers in a very short period of time, occurring in Ms. Livingston’s Wells Fargo account and the unauthorized remote logins, Wells Fargo failed to timely act, secure and protect Ms. Livingston’s money,” states the lawsuit.
The company then advised the plaintiff they would place a hold on her final wire transfer, but waited several days before attempting to call back the previous wire transfers to the Bank of Bangkok, according to the lawsuit.
Wells Fargo owed a contractual and fiduciary duty to protect the plaintiffs funds, according to the lawsuit, which says the company breached its own Deposit Account Agreement by failing to take proper action to stop the fraud and by failing to immediately recall the wire transfers after it finally informed the plaintiff about it.
Livingston said that, in addition to losing hundreds of thousands of dollars — most of her life savings — she has suffered from emotional damages including stress, anxiety, and loss of sleep.
She accuses Wells Fargo of negligence/voluntary assumption of duty, breach of contract, and violating the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law.
Plaintiff is demanding a jury trial and seeking an amount well-in-excess of $50,000 that will fully compensate her for her losses to the Wells Fargo fraud.
Wells Fargo was in the news earlier this month after the company agreed to a $28 million class action settlement with consumers who alleged telemarketers working on the company’s behalf recorded phone calls without consent.
Do you believe Wells Fargo is liable for failing to protect Ms. Livingston from fraud? Let us know in the comments!
The plaintiff is represented by Gavin P. Lentz, Esquire, Vincent van Laar, Esquire, and Matthew L. Minsky, Esquire of Bochetto & Lentz, P.C.
The Wells Fargo Fraud Lawsuit is Livingston v. Wells Fargo & Company, Case No. 2:21-cv-03866, in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.
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17 thoughts onWells Fargo Looked On As Elderly Customer Lost $450,000 To Fraud, Says Lawsuit
My mother was scammed into sending $48,000 to a west coast Wells Fargo bank account all according to the scammer inorder to “secure her funds”. Scammers gave her the WF bank details to wire the money. However, after wiring money to WF she tried to immediately reach Wells Fargo on those same details to stop the transfer. WF couldn’t be reached for at least 2-3 days and then she didn’t hear anything back from WF until the account she sent $$ to was “closed”.
As WF was unavailable just long enough to stop the transaction, I consider them accessories to the crime. I am sure there are many more retirees to join a class action suit for all the individuals who have lost their retirement mainly due to WF working as an accomplice to bilk all these posting as well as the countless others who are out there with no where to turn.
My father who is 89 years old was just a victim of financial exploitation. He banked at Wells Fargo for 35 years however they did nothing to protect him when he was a victim of fraud and Wells Fargo transferred 421,000 dollars between Jan and Feb 2023 to bitcoin and another account. NO ONE did anything to stop this despite so many red flags! Now they say they are not responsible for the money they moved out of his account. I see all these articles about Wells Fargo caring about and making elder financial exploitation a priority to protect and stop yet it seems they are completely ready to allow it to go on and then blame the victim.
My 75 year old husband was the victim of cybercriminals through Wells Fargo Bank and exactly the same thing occurred, cybercrime in our accounts, moving money around to make it look like a wire in, and then alerting Wells Fargo within one hour after he followed the criminals instructions to wire out a large amount of funds (scammers who worked on our computers);since that time Wells Fargo denies any responsibility, did not try to recall the wire for five days even though they were notified before the wire even went out due to holiday, and after 20 calls, 20 emails and lots of effort on our part, they denied our claim with a fabricated letter that they did everything they could even though they did nothing. Took 20 days to get a hold harmless and the recipient bank claims Wells never made any recall attempts even thought their escalation team advised us they made three. Their fraud department did NOTHING after at least 20 calls in. They Refused to talk to recipient bank who we were in communication with, and that bank eventually released the money to the criminals claiming no contact from Wells Fargo, even after we gave Wells all the contact names and numbers, emails! Filing complaints with regulators but would like to get this on the news – may try Fox News – lots more to this story, pretty unbelievable, loss of $71,650 of retirement savings, more than half of what we had.
Have you had any success in recouping funds?
My incident happened is Citibank. Just like the victim. Let me know are you submit class action against Citibank
I’ve reached out before, but no response.
Wells Fargo allowed my mother to be financially exploited for a year after I had warned WF that my 90yr old mother was involved in the ‘Jamaican Lotto Scam’. Visited WF branch in person with local police officer and showed them proof and still Wells Fargo did nothing.
I’m very interested in your case and would like to learn more.
Wells Fargo is the one that is stealing the money that’s why they didn’t notify her they just stole my life savings the managers in Fort Oglethorpe Georgia just stole my life savings and Wells Fargo is backing them and protecting them and I was never notified. They are stealing people’s money they are draining savings account retirement trust funds Wells Fargo is the fraudulent company where is the FBI why are they not stepping in they are tons of us why are these people not going to prison I want them prosecuted I’m homeless 58 years old disabled and homeless because of Wells Fargo and I am not stopping I want my money back
Wells Fargo refuses to pay me back 1000.00 that I was scammed out of when someone accessed my account and deposited two different checks in the amount of $499.69. They told me to supply them with 2 Apple Pay anywhere for 500.00 each for a loan I was approved for. I did this only because they told me that it was for good faith that I paid them and then I would receive the loan from Light stream Financial
Was a victim of zelle fraud, it has taken me over 6 weeks to get any type of answer and now told that I will be out that money of 3500.00. This is after they failed to noitfy zelle the minute I notified them of the scam, it took them an additional 10 days to notify zelle and Iwas advised that there is no one from zelle to contact that if they found the money, it would just show back up in my account. Thee has to be a lawsuit pending or starting.
If you’d like to be interviewed by an investigative journalist working on this story, please contact me at kristinroland11@gmail.com and I’ll put you in touch. The story is about WF’s negligence and failing to protect customers from common scams, especially vulnerable elderly customers. They publish 4 common scams on their website and advise customers to “speak with their trusted banker” if someone asks them to wire or transfer funds. My parents followed that protocol and WF failed to protect them from wiring money to an obvious fraudster in Singapore. Very sad story. We’re discovering this is a pattern at WF, too.
I was also a victim of Zelle scam and my bank Wells Fargo will not refund my money. So frustrated.
This also happened to my parents at a Wells Fargo branch in Dallas, Texas. We’ve spent over 30 hours trying to resolve it with Wells Fargo and received a letter with a fabricated account of what actually happened so we’re pursuing legal action now and working with an investigate journalist on a national story about WF.
would love to stay updated on this as well, they are a horrible bank and need nation scrutiny.
I was a victim of wire fraud. Wells Fargo and Bank of America did not protect me. I don’t know how criminals can open account and scam people. I transferred 30000 from Wells Fargo account to the scammers account in Bank of America, because they acted as e-commerce franchise. As a matter of fact They close the case without doing further investigation. I was told that if they send a message to Bank of America 3 times and they do not respond , they will close the case and they did. I believe that they did not care. If they had put a little effort and two banks investigated the case they would have caught the criminal, but they did not. Very disappointed. Both banks should pay me the money if they cannot do thorough background check on criminals.who use their backs for stealing innocent people hard earning money.
Arlington, Texas 2020-2021
My 90yr old mother was duped into a lotto scam and 5 banks in as many months had to close her accounts to avoid their liability as she
continued to pay fees and taxes to get her “winnings”. Wells Fargo ignored the Texas Elder Financial Protection Act, ignored my pleas to
act and even allowed my mother to make cash deposits into a third,
unrelated account for a year, knowing she was in an active scam.
Complete negligence and ignored their fiduciary duty to protect.
Despicable and unethical.
There are likely more scam victims that should hold Wells Fargo accountable.