Do banks aid online fraud against seniors?
Inquirer columnist Randy David recently wrote about two female seniors who were victimized online by smooth-talking (and bogus) bank employees (see “Online scams and the elderly,” 12/21/25). Both lost substantially; one lost her life savings.
Now in my late 70s, I, too, am among those gullible elderly females who have lost massively to slick con men posing as bank staff. Like David’s in-law and neighbor, I was duped big-time. But unlike them, I was scammed twice, the first time through what I suspect was a leakage at a Quezon City branch of a major bank.
In July 2025, I applied for a new credit card at the said bank branch to replace a missing card. I shared the necessary information with two female employees handling the paperwork and, at their insistence, updated an ATM card that was valid until December 2028. I wondered why the haste, but granted them good faith. Two other employees were within hearing distance. The bank said it would inform me about the new credit card.
Back in Zamboanga City, there was no word on my new credit card, but I let this pass because I had found the missing card at home, which, the local branch said, I could still use for payments.
In November, I was shocked to learn (through a text notice) that I had over P200,000 payable on my credit card. But my monthly charges ranged from only P10,000 to P20,000! I deemed it an error. When someone called, supposedly a bank employee, verifying whether I had made a P50,000 cash advance for an ailing father, I said no. After two calls, he never called again. Belatedly, I learned that four fraudulent cash advances had been made on the credit card within hours of each other, amounting to P188,000. My December notice had a balance of P196,057.76. I also learned that my new (updated) ATM account had been emptied of its P76,000 deposit. So I submitted a formal complaint to the bank unit responsible. An investigation would take a month.
When the huge balance persisted in January, I checked the bank investigation results. The response: I would have to pay the P188,000 because I had given out an OTP (one-time password). The bank representative said this was final, with no appeal. But I had no knowledge of the fraud, much less shared an OTP! Why was I not questioned as the aggrieved party? What were the bank’s information sources? How were the cash withdrawals made when both my credit and ATM cards were with me in Zamboanga? Why was there no formal report on the “investigation”?
In hindsight, I realized that these fraudulent withdrawals were no accident, but could be traced to the information I shared during that July bank visit. I belatedly learned that the first attempt to tamper with these accounts soon followed my bank visit. The internal bank investigation chose to ignore this chain of events, blaming me instead. Worse, these initial scams served as a stepping stone to the next, more devastating, set of losses, in a modus akin to those cited by David.
Online bank fraud has become a cottage industry employing networks that most likely include insiders, true in my case.(Parenthetically, I note that the bank had figured in a money-laundering scandal a decade earlier, amounting to tens of millions of dollars; a branch manager was eventually jailed.) I got calls from seven men over two-and-a-half months, claiming to be bank staff, with the credit card/ATM fraud as the opening gambit. But it was the caller No. 3 who made a clean sweep of my accounts with another bank (“We need to transfer your deposits to another account, otherwise they are at risk.”) Saying he was seconded by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas because this was “cybercrime,” he cited purported attempts to withdraw cash from my other bank accounts. Later, callers hung up when I asked whether they were also scammers. One Jose Luis Sotto sounded like a college professor.
Now sadder, but wiser, I say to the banks: Please be strict with your protocols, procedures, and personnel; otherwise, you enable scammers to fleece female seniors of their life’s savings. Corollarily, have a fair, comprehensive, and transparent system of investigating fraud complaints. Do not simply shift the blame onto clients, however gullible. Banking is built on trust. With sloppy protocols and shoddy investigations, that trust founders.
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Zamboanga City-based and now retired, Jurgette A. Honculada, 78, has been engaged in the trade union and women’s movements.
