Financial Agent Steals All of Rich Old Lady's Money, Petty Lawyer Ruins Him Later

A banker accesses a wealthy old lady’s account and robs all her money to live like a king but has his life ruined by a simple-looking “petty” lawyer.

While many might consider their money safe in the banks, one old lady’s story hit the front page and made people ponder the safety of their cash deposits.

Posting to Reddit’s popular subreddit “ProRevenge,” a user with the handle ecashepherd narrated a story about his brother’s client—a wealthy old lady dying of Alzheimer’s and the unthinkable way in which her financial agent and his accomplices conned her.

While the perpetrators of the theft thought nobody would find out, a “petty lawyer” plotted the best revenge to take them down and ruin them for life.

The Original Poster (OP)’s brother was a lawyer who took up several minor cases. At the time, he got the call to represent an old lady’s case that most big-time attorneys either passed on or failed to justify.

The old lady in question had an account in a major bank whose name wasn't disclosed for apparent reasons. She had Alzheimer’s, and her disability eventually laid the groundwork for a massive robbery of her account.

The arbitration clauses secretly seeded in her contracts with the bank proved more of a roadblock. The financial agents made sure not to leave any loopholes that would lead to legal action or discovery done against them.

In fact, they froze the older woman’s access to her accounts due to forgery. She couldn’t get her bank statements, and they ensured she never stood a chance against them if she sued them.

The more OP’s brother got into the minute details of the woman’s case, the more obsessed he was to avenge her wrongdoers.

The lawyer handed over the evidence in court, and soon, the big bad time for the wrongdoers arrived through the hearing.

By the time he got his hands on the case, the woman could barely understand the trouble around her. However, her son wanted to get back at the bank and joined forces with the lawyer, who stumbled upon that one significant loophole to crack the case.

He found a technicality that terminated the arbitration clause, which indicated big trouble for the shady financial advisers. He eventually involved the bank in the discovery process.

Soon, some disturbing details came to light, particularly the bank’s intentional decision not to keep original copies of the contract so they couldn’t prove the existence of the arbitration clause.

The fraudsters did make duplicate copies of the original contract but with certain obscure modifications. After careful observation, the lawyer noticed the text and page numbers mismatched.

Despite delaying the discovery, the bank was forced to dump over 200 cartons of documents on OP’s brother three days before the hearing.

The lawyer had barely 72 hours to crack the case with tens of thousands of bank documents to rummage through.

He rented a hotel for the weekend to avoid any disturbances and to fully absorb the case. He then ran into an email between the bank’s VP and chief lawyer in one of the boxes.

The two had discussed that there wouldn’t be any discovery process and the documents needn’t be destroyed. They’d branded OP’s brother as a “petty country lawyer” who wouldn’t fight for a lady who had no money to pay him.

Shockingly enough, the bankers also discussed how the old lady would soon die of Alzheimer’s before her accounts would be unfrozen once her forgery was proven false.

Despite all that planning and plotting, the fraudsters failed to destroy the documents that added more nails to their coffins. The lawyer handed over the evidence in court, and soon, the big bad time for the wrongdoers arrived through the hearing.

This prompted the bank to step forward and settle. Eventually, the lawyer won his client around $13M in a separate part of the case.

The agent, aka the mastermind behind this robbery scheme, pleaded guilty. He lost his home, had his financial broker license canceled, and his wife left him.

After reading his post, people online were curious how much was stolen from the lady. For instance, user pupis2001 commented:

“How much was stolen, to begin with?”

“In the millions. Not sure what the total of judgments/settlements was, but more than what was stolen,” OP said.

He claimed the agent wanted to gain reputation in the society and had donated large chunks of the money he'd stolen to charities so that he’d be invited to galas and get awarded. He’d also funded his kid’s expensive college and bought $200K worth of wine that was never reclaimed.

“Sadly, the lady did, in fact, die before the case settled,” OP recounted. The settlement went to her son and then to a charitable trust that elected his brother as its primary trustee.

“My brother is going to galas and getting philanthropic awards with the money this guy helped pay for with the sale of his houses, cars,” he concluded.

Questions to Ponder:

Would OP’s brother still win the case and defame the bankers involved if the bank destroyed the documents?

The bank agent and his accomplices were confident that there wouldn’t be any discovery process and didn’t find it necessary to destroy the documents. But their decision backfired and gave OP’s brother a loophole to crack the case. However, it’s probably guesswork, and a lengthy legal tussle had the documents been destroyed.

Do you think any prominent attorney could’ve handled this case differently?

OP claimed that even big-time attorneys in the area either passed on the old lady’s case or, even if they tried, failed to fetch a solution. That’s when the woman’s son turned to a petty lawyer to see if things would work, and luckily, it did. Do you think the attorneys who handled the lady's case before overlooked the pieces of evidence in the documents or just didn't want to go up against the bank?

If you liked reading this story, here’s how a bus driver who overhears an old lady’s call with her grandson exposes a $35K scam.

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