A concerned daughter claimed her 81-year-old mother was a victim of fraudulent activity.
Laurie Johnson recalled an incident while speaking with CTV News about a Bank of Montreal (BMO) scam that caused his mother to lose $15,000.
According to Johnson, her mother fell into a trap after receiving a unique access code from her bank that a scammer, claiming to be a BMO employee, used to access her account.
The scammer then used that code to log into his account and then sent $15,000 to an account in Bangladesh.
“She has never, and I have never, made a global money transfer,” Johnson told CTV News in March 2024.
‘Wouldn’t they point that out and make a phone call or just stop it and try to find out if it was really done by the client? It just seems too easy for that to happen.’
Laurie Johnson recalled an incident on CTV News about a Bank of Montreal (BMO) that her 81-year-old mother fell in love with.
According to Johnson, the $15,000 was sent to an offshore bank account in Bangladesh and she has been working to get the money back from her mother for at least two months.
Laurie Johnson recalled an incident on CTV News about a Bank of Montreal (BMO) that her 81-year-old mother fell in love with (pictured: file photo of a woman on her phone)
BMO was founded in Montreal, Quebec, in the 19th century and is currently the oldest bank in Canada.
Is website says BMO’s goal is to “boldly grow good in business and life.”
BMO provides personal and commercial banking and global markets and investment banking services to more than 10 million people.
Johnson’s mother is one of those people, and even though her account is associated with that bank, her angry daughter is frustrated with the bank’s actions.
“She’s been a Bank of Montreal customer for 60 years and I have been too,” Johnson said.
“You would think that with all the benefits they bring they could help their clients.”
Johnson is now acting as her mother’s attorney-in-fact and has claimed that she has been trying to get her mother’s money back for months.
However, Johnson’s mother is not the only victim of a BMO scam.
Several BMO customers have been telling their stories of being scammed and losing thousands of dollars to scammers in a WhatsApp group.
Ottawa resident Katya Feder told CTV News a similar scam story that happened to her in April 2023.
Feder claimed she was also scammed by a scammer claiming to be a BMO employee while they were talking on the phone.
The incident began after the alleged employee called her to ask if a transaction to purchase cryptocurrency from her account was legitimate.
‘I said OK, great! They are aware of things at the bank. “Wonderful,” Feder said.
“Then he said, ‘We’re just going to verify your identity; “We’ll just send you a verification code.”
Once he repeated the code to the scammer, his account was compromised and he lost $14,500.
‘I was completely shocked. Amazed. I mean, I really couldn’t believe it,’ she stated.
He added that other BMO customers have shared their own scam stories in a WhatsApp group.
The group was created in January 2024 and contains “several stories of fraud that occurred through their bank in different ways.”
Katya Feder told CTV News she lost $14,500 after a scammer, claiming to be a BMO employee, sent her a one-time passcode in April 2023. (Pictured: File photo of a woman on your phone)
Christine and Kevin Avey of Norwich, Ontario, were also victims of fraud and did not like the answers BMO gave them about the issue.
A scammer asked Kevin to confirm his identity by sending a one-time password while trying to log in to the BMO website.
He woke up the next day to find that $15,000 had been taken from them and put in an offshore account.
“I had only made deposits into this account, and this large amount of transaction was allowed to occur without even notifying us or simply not allowing the transaction to complete,” Christine wrote in an email to CTV News.
BMO responded to the couples’ complaints, but like Johnson, they were not happy with the bank’s response.
“BMO explained that if we didn’t give it to anyone, then we weren’t taking reasonable care to protect our password,” Christine wrote.
“This appears to be the standard line that BMO offers to its customers rather than BMO implementing stricter security measures or perhaps a lower limit allowed on global transfers.”
The couple spoke with a local BMO manager and ended up receiving $7,500 from the bank.
However, the manager stated that the money was sent to them as an act of “good faith” and that it goes against bank policy.
BMO has since warned its customers to take additional security measures to reduce the risk of being scammed.
Christine and Kevin Avey of Norwich, Ontario, discovered that $15,000 had been removed from their BMO account. The Aveys received $7,500 from the bank shortly afterward. (Pictured: file photo of a couple looking at banknotes)
The bank said in its statement that it “encourages customers to be diligent in protecting their mobile and online credentials.”
Some of BMO’s suggestions include signing up for alerts to monitor frequently chained bank accounts, passwords and PIN numbers, and never revealing unique passwords and access codes.
“In the normal course, when a customer receives a unique access code, it is accompanied by the following information: ‘Warning: This code grants access to your accounts,’ the statement said.
‘Calls to request it can be a scam. If they call you, hang up and call the number on the BMO card.
Daily Mail has contacted BMO for comment.
