Thread: Bank customers get help

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Bank customers get help
Probe of lost savings focuses on ex-worker

By Lisa Black and Josh Noel
Tribune staff reporters
Published December 9, 2005


U.S. Bank has dispatched a team of bankers to its Highwood branch to help dozens of customers, most of them Mexican immigrants, who say their accounts disappeared or were depleted, officials said Thursday.

As bank customers streamed into the Highwood Police Department to say they feared they had lost thousands of dollars, Chief Dave Wentz said the case is focusing on a single former bank employee who is cooperating with investigators. Bank officials said the woman at the center of the investigation is no longer an employee.

More than 50 people may be affected, Wentz said.

"They've been coming in all day," said Wentz, who did not estimate how much money might be missing.

The bank customers say savings and other accounts at the Highwood branch are missing or were drawn down without their permission. Some people have reported losing $20,000 to $40,000, according to a lawyer representing two Waukegan families.

The bank began conducting an investigation several weeks ago, said Steve Dale, spokesman for Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, the parent of U.S. Bank

"We are in the process of giving money back to individuals," said Dale, who would not say how many people were being reimbursed or when reimbursements began.

"We have deployed a team of a dozen bankers into the branch and the market to try to help customers by reconfiguring their accounts."

The FBI is conducting a preliminary investigation, officials said.

Dale declined to say how long the former employee had worked at the branch or how far back the irregularities go.

"It's a horrific situation," said Lawrence Ruder, a lawyer who is helping two Waukegan families collect from U.S. Bank. "There's a huge fear factor," Ruder said. "They come to the United States and are told to trust these big banks, and then this happens."

The Mexican Consulate has been working closely with the U.S. banking community to encourage immigrants to open bank accounts.

Carlos Sada, Mexico's consul general in Chicago, expressed concern and offered help to Mexican immigrants who are customers of the bank.

"What we are going to be doing is following these cases and call [the bank] and ask them to give information about what is happening with these persons," Sada said, adding that the consulate could offer legal help to bank customers.

The allegations are a blow to financial institutions that have worked to gain the trust of immigrants, financial experts said Thursday. "In a tight-knit community, [information] can spread like wildfire and impact the attitudes of many people," said Anna Paulson, who researches immigrants' banking habits for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

"If you come from a country whose institutions don't do a great job of protecting private property and giving an incentive for investment, you bring those attitudes to the U.S.," said Paulson, a senior economist.

The bank opened the Center for the Study of Financial Access for Immigrants to reach immigrants who traditionally paid higher fees at currency exchanges.

Only 22 percent of Mexican immigrants had checking accounts between 1996 and 2000, Paulson said.

Eddie Martinez, who said the bank had no record of his certificate of deposit accounts totaling $40,000, has been surprised that so many other customers appear to have been affected.

"I thought it would be a couple people, but it has gotten huge," said Martinez, 26, whose bilingual skills are helping him organize other potential victims. "I'm getting calls from different lawyers who want to represent us.

"One part of me feels good that we're all uniting. But another part feels sad. These are people working minimum-wage jobs. It's disgusting what's happening to them."

Norberto Ramirez, 66, bags groceries at a Highland Park store. He moved to the United States in 1983 because jobs were scarce in Mexico. He opened his first bank account in the United States because in Mexico he had to spend all his money to support his family.

He had $8,000 in a CD, which he discovered last week had a fake account number.

"We make such little money, we're trying to save it," he said. "I'm an older person, and I was saving the money for the day I could not work anymore."

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More money missing from Highwood bank
By Sarah Schulte
December 11, 2005 (Highwood, IL) - More victims have come forward in the far north suburbs where dozens of customers claim money they deposited in a bank is now missing. It happened at a U.S. Bank branch in Highwood. Many of the victims are Mexican immigrants.

The list keeps growing; more Highwood residents are finding out thousands of dollars of saved money is missing from the U.S. Bank of Highwood.
On Sunday, the scandal was talked about at a very important church service in Highwood.

Sunday mass was packed at St. James church in Highwood. For catholic Mexicans, the virgin of Guadalupe day is not to be missed which is why some community leaders and a representative from the Mexican consulate chose this church service to reach out to more potential victims of the Highwood banking scandal.


"I'm trying to organize the people because the bank is not getting the word out of what happened. These people don't know that their accounts are fake. So we're trying to organize them as a group to put pressure on the bank to help us," said Eddie Martinez.

Eddie Martinez is also a victim, he and his mother have lost close to $40,000. The list of U.S. Bank of Highwood customers whose life savings are missing is growing. Many of the victims are Mexican immigrants who speak very little English.

Floriencia Espinoza lost $24,000 she was saving for her daughter's college education. "One would think you put your money and trust it in the bank because you don't want to keep it at home. So it's just an injustice to find out that they stole our money," Espinoza said through an interpreter.

State senator Susan Garrett held a meeting Saturday offering to help and Sunday Rita Vargas with the Mexican consulate offered legal assistance especially to victims who are not documented.

"We'd like to be involved, especially in this situation because I think this is very serious and it's impacting the Mexican community here. So this is very important," Vargas said.

The U.S. Bank of Highwood has told its customers the bank and police are focusing one female employee who may be responsible for stealing customers' money. Martinez says it's an employee who had worked at the bank for years.

No arrests have been made in this case. State senator Susan Garrett says she has spoken with the FBI and the agency has not officially begun an investigation.

Garrett plans to meet with bank officials on Monday in hope of finding out more information about the employee in question and about the possibility of customers getting their money back.

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