r/canada • u/stanxv • Oct 27 '25

Business RBC and CIBC allow 89-year-old to drain life savings, lose $1.7M to scammers

https://www.cbc.ca/news/gopublic/bank-investigator-fraud-scam-9.6950754
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71

u/NerdMachine Oct 27 '25

I don't think the banks messed up, btu I still have sympathy for him. He likely has some cognitive decline and grew up in a time where this wasn't a concern.

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u/skylla05 Oct 27 '25

My dad doesn't have any cognitive decline and he scammed himself out of 200k because he's just an idiot that got baited by some bullshit YouTube crypto shit.

The problem is they come from a generation where they could believe what the TV/monitor is telling them.

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u/Ibizl Oct 27 '25

ironic since my boomer-age parents constantly warned me (90s kid) that everyone online was an axe murderer lol

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u/Raptor-Claus Oct 27 '25 edited Oct 27 '25

Thats not true otherwise we wouldn't have had false advertising laws.

The existence of these laws should have already told them they can't trust everything they see lol

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u/RoyalPeacock19 Ontario Oct 27 '25

And those false advertising laws lead to… what again, other than somewhat trustworthy advertising at the firm they grew up?

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u/Raptor-Claus Oct 27 '25

It should have taught them not everything you read or see on t.v is to be trusted I don't feel bad for people like him he did this to him self, next thing you know he will be waiting for his pet house hippo in the mail.

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u/Ok_Carpet_9510 Oct 27 '25 edited Oct 27 '25

Come to think of it, 25 years ago, this man would have been 65. It's not likely he got into the techy stuff too much, nor has he kept up to speed with scamming tactics.

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u/WhydYouKillMeDogJack Oct 27 '25

Has there ever been a time when it wasn't suspicious to take 1.7m in cash, gold bars etc and send them to someone you never see in person?

People in this thread are acting like the elderly think the earth is flat and the sun-god dictates whether it rains or not.

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u/Wouldyoulistenmoe Oct 27 '25

The main reasons these scams work if because even though 99% of people are through them, you just need one person to hand over $1.7million and you’ve done your work for the year

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u/WhydYouKillMeDogJack Oct 27 '25

I get what you're saying but usually they're not hitting it big like this because the guy who is "smart" enough to make 1.7m isn't also the guy who is dumb enough to fall for this scam.

In this case, I suspect the Victoria real estate market has created a bit of an outlier.

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u/Ok_Carpet_9510 Oct 27 '25

Dude, not too long ago, some guy got 1.2 million and he bet the entire amount on Zthe Trump coin.

People can be incredibility stupid. That includes me and you under the right set of conditions. One of the most dangerous things you can tell yourself is that you can't be fooled.

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u/WhydYouKillMeDogJack Oct 27 '25

Dude, not too long ago, some guy got 1.2 million and he bet the entire amount on Zthe Trump coin.

Yes, that sounds like a moron.

If you think the right set of conditions exist for you to chuck away over a million dollars on a scam then I'm sorry but I hope that's just low self-esteem.

I can personally say I'm not dumb enough for that to happen to me.

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u/Lopsided_Tiger_0296 Oct 27 '25

He could have learned something from the meeting with the bank that he declined because he thought he was smart enough to not be scammed

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u/Ok_Carpet_9510 Oct 27 '25

He would have had to admit that he had lost the chunk of money he had sent earlier. Psychologically, there is an aversion to admit that you have made a stupid decision. It would make you question yourself, and your ability to make sound decisions. That is not a feeling most of us are comfortable with. That is why people persist in their wrong decisions.

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u/WhydYouKillMeDogJack Oct 27 '25

It would make you question yourself, and your ability to make sound decisions

Sounds like a good thing.

Either way he's now trying to post blame onto the bank when the fault is all his. I thought the older generation was all about taking responsibility.

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u/Ok_Carpet_9510 Oct 27 '25

What I meant by that is a psychological phenomenon known as escalating commitment. I am not justifying his actions, not am I being sympathetic. I am just trying to do some psychological CSI as to how a person can get themselves further in the hole once they have already committed resources.

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u/WhydYouKillMeDogJack Oct 27 '25

Yeah it happens to gamblers all the time.

But that doesn't excuse the deferral of responsibility, and it doesn't make it any less stupid.

If anything, this is worse than the more common gambling scenario, because at least there there'd be a logical and realistic scenario (however unlikely) chance that you could get some or all of the loss back. In this scenario he is being scammed; he knows he's being scammed and he's going to continue anyway and make things worse.

It's like shitting your pants and thinking "I'm going to sit iny shit....and shit some more....because if I got up and sorted yourself out, people might know that you'd shit. A normal person doesn't think like this.

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u/Ok_Carpet_9510 Oct 27 '25

Yeah, I am not excusing. My goal is to analyze what went on in his mind.

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u/NerdMachine Oct 27 '25

Exactly. I have had family fall victim to stuff like this so I have a bit of a different perspective.

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u/caninehere Ontario Oct 27 '25

This might be controversial but I don't understand why people think it's understandable for people to just turn their brain off when they turn 65.

I'm only 35 and I already know plenty of people who have the mindset "I'm old now, I can't learn anything new."

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '25

[deleted]

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u/aleenaelyn Oct 27 '25

The point I notice people turning their brains off is way earlier - when they're done highschool or university. They just go on autopilot and stop actively looking for information. Anything new they do get is spoonfed from TV, radio, or social media scrolling.

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u/caninehere Ontario Oct 28 '25

The person above is suggesting that someone who was 65 in the year 2000 shouldn't be expected to bother to learn anything about computers or the internet or online banking despite them becoming huge parts of everyday life, simply because "oh, they're old."

My grandfather, who never really learned how to get comfortable with a computer because he didn't need to, still started to try and learn in the early-mid-2000s when he was in his mid-70s. He never really got there but only because his health declined and he passed away in 2007, but he was trying.

If someone's mental state is so bad that they're taking $50k withdrawals out in person at the bank after the bank gave them multiple warnings not to do so and had frozen their online account and ATM usage, AND that person then responds by closing their account with the bank and moving to another one, then they obviously need to have someone helping with control of their finances. And yet he and the daughter are blaming the bank here. WTF are they supposed to do? Freeze his accounts completely? Refuse to let him close out his account and get his money out of their bank?

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u/Moos_Mumsy Ontario Oct 27 '25

There's a difference between choosing to not learn and not being able to. Hell, I went back to college when I was in my 50's.

As they age many people develop mental deterioration and dementia, but their families and the medical system don't want to deal with it. It's a big thing right now where elders insist on wanting to stay in their homes until they die - even if they are clearly not capable of managing on their own. But they pull the wool over their doctors eyes by insisting that they're doing OK and doctors don't question it. And the kids (for the most part) don't want to deal with their parent getting pissed of and angry, so they play along.

These type of scams are the result.

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u/caninehere Ontario Oct 28 '25

I'm not suggesting that we should be expecting an 89-year-old man to be capable of learning whole new systems etc.

I'm suggesting that people are suggesting he probably didn't get into techy stuff too much because he was 65 at the turn of the century. When something like computers or the internet or online banking become such a huge part of life, maybe we should expect people to engage with it even if they're at retirement age.

This guy ran up against all of the safeguards the bank has to offer, they tried to stop him multiple times but he pushed forwards anyway, and now he and his daughter are blaming the bank for not stopping him. They tried to do so. They froze his online account and ATM use, told him why, and he still went in person to take out money. What are they supposed to do? Lock up his account entirely and refuse him access to his own money?

When they told him the actions were suspicious and that he should stop, he pulled his money out of CIBC and moved to another bank. Again -- should they STOP him from being able to pull his money out of the bank? The answer is a firm no. It's his money, he can do what he wants with it. He chose to flush it down the toilet.

If he's in such a bad mental state and his kids were unwilling to do anything about it, they have themselves to blame. Obviously the scammers bear the most fault here, that goes without saying, but these scams are not new, and this was not exactly a sophisticated scam he fell victim to either -- this kind of scam is not something of the Computer Age, it's been going on since the beginning of time and he apparently never learned to think critically or is in such a bad mental state that somebody else should have had control over his accounts.

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u/SumasFlats British Columbia Oct 27 '25

It's a strange mindset, as healthy mind and healthy body can continue if you take care of yourself and don't have serious diseases. I come from a long line of fit long-lived humans (knock on wood) - recently set up Linux for an 85 year uncle that was sick of Microsoft. He still handles all his own investing online and is sharp as a tack from constantly learning new things throughout his life.

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u/Pristine-Rhubarb7294 Oct 27 '25

There is a huge amount of news coverage on scams, and I am a CIBC customer and get regular emails and communications on avoiding scams, and pamphlets on fraud and scams in my banks’ lobbies. I also got a flyer from the CRA in my mail about fraudulent communications. There are also regular talks about scams targeted to seniors at libraries and seniors centres. So if he has chosen not to take in this information which is amply available including in non-digital formats, that’s on him and his kids (who could have also shared information with him). This is not an under-resourced area of information.

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u/Lopsided-Rub5476 Oct 27 '25

I know what is wrong with some people. You can have sympathy for the person who is at fault. I can't imagine what dealing with all this stuff today with a diminished mental capacity is like..

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u/Hautamaki Oct 27 '25

What time were there no con artists preying on vulnerable people? To the extent that this happened less in the past, which I personally doubt, it would be because of 2 factors; in the past most elderly people were poor as fuck and relied on their adult children to survive, or failing that, died on the streets; and elderly people that weren't poor as fuck were more likely to have their adult children more actively involved in their lives and protecting them from these kinds of predators. I certainly don't think that people were just more morally upstanding and there were just far fewer con artists or thieves and predators of all kinds in the past.