SGM Metals: JPM Banker Accused of Stealing $100K from an Alzheimer Riddled Customer!

July 13, 2012 - PRLog -- The Huffington Post reports: [ Here's a new one: A JPMorgan Chase employee has been accused of taking advantage of a man suffering from Alzheimer's by pulling $100,000 from his bank account, according to a new lawsuit.

The curator assigned to make decisions for Herman Lafayette, who is legally incapacitated because of his Alzheimer's, claims that a JPMorgan employee took advantage of Lafayette after his diagnosis in 2008. According to the lawsuit, the unnamed bank employee stole $100,000 from Lafayette over the course of a year (h/t Courthouse News Service).

A JPMorgan Chase representative told HuffPost that the bank had just been informed of the lawsuit, and that the bank takes "these matters very seriously and will investigate."

Of course, banks have been accused of such misappropriation before. In 2010, JPMorgan allegedly had a Washington man unjustly arrested after he attempted to cash his own check. Then last summer, it was reported that Bank of America had misappropriated $30,000 worth of Social Security checks for one Riverside, California, resident. The bank only corrected the error after the Riverside District Attorney initiated an investigation.

The JPMorgan employee first established a separate bank account for Lafayette, then assigned himself a personal debit card, according to the lawsuit. The defendant then allegedly proceeded to taking out $300 per day over the course of a year. The discovery that $100,000 was missing from Lafayette's account was made nearly one year after his granddaughter, LaDonnis Williams, became his legally appointed curator in March 2010, Lafayette's attorney, Karen Hayes Green, told The Huffington Post. ]

Does this fall under the recent research that 24% of financial services executives believe it to be justified to operate unethically or even illegally in the interest of profit seeking, or is this just an example of outright fraud and crime? My opinion leans towards the latter of the two choices without a doubt. What does that say about the state of banking operations that an employee can fraudulently establish a parallel bank account to an incapacitated bank customer riddled with a brain eating disease that renders him unable to remember his own name from time to time and anoint himself as the sole custodian on the parallel account so that he can pull $300 per day out? Where was the management on this one? Don’t you need signatures of the customer to do such a thing? Does this mean he attained the signature of the incapacitated customer under false pretenses? If so this makes the offender that much more of a scumbag altogether.

Is this a clue as to how low society has sunk in this modern day and age that is saturated by video games and reality TV? Are the people around us everyday that dislocated from reality that they are willing to rob a handicapped person of his life savings without any remorse what so ever? Don’t forget if you were to go into your bank and withdrawal $100K they would do everything in their power to discourage you from doing pulling your money out. The banks are on such unstable ground that they have been forced to produce living wills in order for regulators to know what the banks have and where it is as well as how to liquidate the banks assets without triggering a global banking crisis. So it is a bit ironic that no supervisors or regulators noticed that an Alzheimer riddled patient was mysteriously pulling $300 per day out of an ATM machine when he cant remember his name much less a PIN code to make a withdrawal?

Let this be a reminder of just how the world really works as well as how the minds of financial services employees can work sometimes. This doesn’t mean that every single bank employee is looking for his next mark but after a recent survey found that 30 percent said their compensation plans created pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law you might want to re-evaluate what you do with your money and where you put it. As society looses grasp of its morals and convictions these types of things will continue to surface and they will only become increasingly more inconceivable as to the depths they sink to. When economies become increasingly more inhospitable due to inflation, recessions and depressions the worst in people tend to surface due to desperation. Often times, an upswing in crime comes as a result of desperate people holding onto the living standard they have come to know and enjoy but are now unable to maintain due to a forced reduction in their income.

Even though the TV tells you repeatedly every single day that we are in recovery and good times are just around the corner, these are the events that are happening around you everyday and its not because we are in an economic recovery but instead because times are tough and they are only getting tougher. As the economy worsens so will the depths that humanity will be willing to stoop too in order to make ends meet and keep their children fed. I’m not predicting a road warrior type scenario like some of my counterparts are at this point but we can all agree that things are not good in the economy and everyone has been forced to make some difficult financial decisions since the housing crash began. If you are willing to admit that fact then its not too far of a stretch to suggest that things could get even worse moving forward.

Establish your “Plan B” in physical gold & silver bullion so that you can effectively offset anymore dollar devaluation that will come from the next round of QE3 by the FED as well as the European bailouts that will come for Spain & Italy. Also know that if the Alzheimer victim in this story had truly been looked out for by his family they would have encouraged him to move his money out of the banks and to hold physical gold & silver bullion. If this had been the case the bank customer wouldn’t, nor couldn’t have been fleeced by the bank employee because ATM machines don’t push out gold coins or silver bars! This is precisely why you should learn from this poor guys experience and make changes for yourself. Sound money in alternative currencies like gold & silver would have protected this victim from the predator.