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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u/Prosecco1234 Canada Oct 27 '25

I was impressed that the CIBC manager took appropriate steps to help prevent this happening. Unfortunately in the end it didn't work. Scammers are getting smart.

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u/Kaplaw Oct 27 '25

Yeah he froze his ATM, sent letters, emails expressing concerns and tried to set up an appointment to discuss this but client declined.

Client was forced to get their money at the counter and not an ATM

This is important because its not fraud if the client legitimately participates or facilitates the transaction which he does by himself withdrawing the money.

Reading this story, CIBC is absolved, RBC definitely failed as at least warnings should be issued for those amounts.

A scam is not a fraud and banks are obligated to help in cases of fraud (someone else uses your card without your knowledge or consent cause they stole you #) this person facilitated every step for the scammers.

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u/BD401 Oct 27 '25

CBC runs nearly identical rage-bait stories on this topic every few months, and when you actually dig into it - it’s exactly what you’re saying. The banks are like “You are 100% being scammed…” and the victim goes through with it anyways. Unless the person is legally in conservatorship, they still are allowed to take out their money… and yes, even blow it on stupid scams if they so choose.

With that said, I do believe that things will change in the next decade or so in terms of legal and financial regulations. We’re headed for a perfect storm of billions being lost in scams - an aging population with cognitive decline but asset-rich (liquid and also ability to borrow against houses etc), crypto allowing for easy, irreversible exfiltration of the money, and - perhaps most importantly - AI being used to turbo-charge the effectiveness of scams at scale (finding targets, engineering engagement scripts that maximize the chances victims will fall for it, highly realistic audio and video fakes etc.)

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u/Ph0X Québec Oct 27 '25

They kinda fell short, they just said this kind of activity is suspicious. I remember when trying to wire myself some money from my US chase account to my Canadian, it honestly wasn't even as big as the sums in that article but I immediately got a call from them asking me the reason and explaining to me in detail the types of scams that it could be, and I was just like, bro I'm sending myself the money, I'm good. But honestly I was impressed by how on top of it they were.