An elderly woman is demanding that Chase Bank repay over $50,000 that scammers took from her bank account.
Shirley Ison-Newsome, 75, is seeking monetary relief after she claims she had alerted the bank that a scam had occurred early enough for withdrawals from her account to be intersected, yet the bank did not.
A case representative reached out to The Dallas Morning News and said there is not much the bank can do since the transactions were authorized, despite whether it was willingly or unwillingly.
Ison-Newsome of Dallas is a retired Dallas Independent School District administrator. She said that when her computer screen froze one day, it displayed a warning message that said she was being hacked. She believed the warning was from Microsoft and stayed on the phone with the number provided, thinking she was being helped. This was unfortunately all a part of a scam that later drained her account.
Ison-Newsome told The Dallas Morning News that after that phone call, she knew something was off.
“That night, I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I woke up in the middle of the night and said, ‘Something was not quite right about that.’”
Arriving at Chase Bank early the next day, Ison-Newsome was relieved to learn from the staff that her funds were untouched. She was told that the $51,000 would be moved to a new account just as a precaution.
However, this was in vain because a few weeks later, she logged into her new account and it was empty.
“I worked all my life,” she said. “I paid my bills on time. I tried to do the right thing. I’ve been with Chase for over 20 years, and I trusted Chase.”
After many exchanges with the bank, Ison-Newsome heard from representatives of Chase corporate. According to her, they explained that there was nothing they could do and that the blame fell on her for authorizing the wire transfer.
Ison-Newsome’s lawsuit against Chase was met with a motion to dismiss filed by the bank on January 12. The motion called it “scattershot pleading” and reiterated that Ison-Newsome had approved the wire transfer.
Data from the Better Business Bureau shows that in 2022, 2% of people scammed by wire transfer did not receive their money back.
Ison-Newsome does not think it is right that the bank will not return her money.
“Chase and other institutions like Chase need to own up to their negligence,” she said. “In this society where the vulnerable are preyed upon — the elderly and women — they need to be much more sensitive to that and not add to the preying,” she said.
Scammers are getting trickier and harder to identify.
Surprisingly, just because you are not as long in the tooth as those often appearing in the news as victims of scams does not mean your information is safe.
Monica Horton, a spokesperson for the North Central Texas BBB, told The Dallas Express that a key target demographic of scam victims is between ages 18 and 24.
“Even if you are tech-savvy, it’s important to know that these scams are out there and anyone can be a victim,” she said.
