Scammers leave Winnipeg woman penniless

A Winnipeg woman was forced to rely on her 91-year-old mother to pay her rent after scammers claiming to be from a bank left her penniless.

Lisa Taron, 62, who lives on a fixed income in subsidized seniors housing, is out thousands of dollars after scammers were able to get into her bank account and clean it out before she could get it stopped.

Now, Taron is warning others about how she was scammed, because if it hadn’t been for her elderly mom, she would be on the street.

“This left me crushed. No money for rent, food, medication, bus pass. I had to borrow money from my 91-year-old mother who keeps asking me, now, when she is getting her money back. What would I have done without the bank of mom?” she said.

“Shame on TD. Why didn’t the bank shut it down the moment I called?”

Taron admits she was flustered and caught off guard on Feb. 12, when, after just arriving home from a trip to the grocery store, her phone rang with the call display showing it was her bank calling.

She said the caller sounded professional, saying they were with the bank’s fraud department and were calling her about suspicious activity in her account.

“He said we just flagged a $93 fund purchase — I said it wasn’t me,” Taron said.

“He put me on hold — the hold music was exactly the one used by the bank — and he came back and told me the last cheque deposited in my account was from (my mother). How would he have known that if it wasn’t my bank? He then said there was a charge with Air Canada. I said I didn’t make that, and then he put me on hold again.

“I was on hold so long that I started to get suspicious, hung up, and phoned my bank. That’s when they said there had been a breach (of my account).”

Taron said she lost more than $2,500 through a quick succession of $93 withdrawals from her account.

But she said the fraudsters also used mobile banking to deposit the same $100 cheque — made out to a Roy Scott from a car dealership in Carman — into her account 21 times.

“All of them bounced, but they got another $2,100 that way. Where is TD’s diligence and their duty of care? Why doesn’t the bank have some sort of software that catches blatant scammy transactions like this?” Taron said.

A spokesman for the car dealership confirmed the cheques didn’t come from them.

Taron insists she never gave the caller her bank account number or PIN, but she did receive a text message at one point from the bank, which she replied with the word “yes.”

Vanessa Iafolla, a national expert on fraud as a principal at the Halifax-based Anti-Fraud Intelligence Consulting, said Canadians need to be vigilant because scammers are professionals.

“They are very good at making things as realistic as they can be,” she said.

But while Iafolla can understand how the scammers were able to make several withdrawals from Taron’s account, she doesn’t know how they were able to deposit so many cheques to withdraw funds from them.

“I’m confused how it got past the system. The system is supposed to stop it,” she said.

More needs to be done by banks and cellphone service providers to make it harder for criminals to scam people out of money, Iafolla said.

Mick Ramos, a TD Bank Group spokesman, said he couldn’t comment on Taron’s case.

“We’re sorry to hear about Ms. Taron’s situation and understand it can be distressing to be a victim of fraud. Please remember, if you receive a suspicious call or text from someone claiming to be your bank, verify it by calling the number on the back of your card. Caller ID can be faked,” he said.

Ramos added that banks will never contact their customers to ask for the numbers in a one-time pass code sent to a mobile device or through email.

“Don’t share this code with anyone,” he said.

In a statement, Ethan Teclu, a spokesman for the Canadian Bank Association, said banks in Canada are dedicated to protecting customers from financial fraud and theft.

The federal government has mandated that when cheques are deposited, banks have to allow an immediate $100 withdrawal from them, Teclu said.

“Banks take many steps to protect clients from potential fraud while balancing their responsibility to follow our clients’ instructions for access and use of their money,” he said.

Nadine Legare, a spokeswoman for the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, said legislation is currently going through that will raise the amount that can be withdrawn immediately from $100 to $250.

But Legare said banks are expected to have controls in place to help detect fraud.

“If a bank has reasonable grounds to believe a cheque deposit is being made for illegal or fraudulent purposes, it does not have to make the first $100 available right away,” Legare said.

As for Taron, she has appealed the matter to the bank and is considering going to small claims court.

“I’m now on a mission to warn others and seek justice,” she said.

“Luckily, I have the bank of mom or this would have been absolutely devastating.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca