An illustration shows a fictionalized Judith, partially underwater as a shadowed figure grabs for her leg. Stacks of money, envelopes, and binders labeled "Bank Policy" fall through the water with her.
The Banks: Part three of seven in the Scammed series.
When Judith Boivin called her Morgan Stanley branch in October 2023 with an unusual request, bank personnel knew something was wrong. People simply don’t empty out their retirement accounts.
The more they pressed her for details, the more suspicious they became. One investigator even used the duck line on her — “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck” — to no avail.
The problem with this maxim is that it’s too vague. It doesn’t account for how people fall prey.
Fraud victims like Judith don’t realize they’re being manipulated. They have become conditioned to see what the scammer wants them to see, their perceptions skewed by fear and a deluge of phone calls, emails, and texts calculated to make them act against their own self-interest.
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This partly explains why no one at Morgan Stanley could dissuade the retired therapist from draining nearly $600,000 out of her retirement account — not even when they cautioned her about the enormous tax consequences of cashing out.
But Judith had a masterful coach: He had her convinced she was helping the FBI bring down a Mexican cartel’s drug and money-laundering operation, and that she needed to move all her money into a “government locker” to ensure it wouldn’t get tangled up in the criminal case. She believed him when he said she’d get it all back after the trial.
He fed her the scripts needed to circumvent Morgan Stanley’s concerns.
The scammer coached Judith Boivin how to overcome obstacles in withdrawing cash, telling her the bank “will have to allow you to take out your money.” (Joshua Carroll and Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)
The most sophisticated scammers know the antifraud tactics used by financial institutions so well that they have devised workarounds. In Judith’s case, she was to tell the Morgan Stanley branch in Green Bay, Wisconsin, that she wanted her money moved closer to her home in Maryland.
He’d also anticipated Morgan Stanley might attempt to pause the withdrawal — akin to a cooling-off period — and instructed her to write a letter. It had to be convincing.
“This is a decision I’m making while in sound mind,” she wrote in a Nov. 6 email to the investment bank. “I wish to have full control over my finances at this time.”
Tearsheet showing a letter Judith wrote to Morgan Stanley petitioning for them to release her funds.
The scammer coached Judith on what to put in a letter to Morgan Stanley to convince the bank to lift the hold on her withdrawal.
Judith communicates that the decision to liquidate her funds was made of her own volition. It wasn’t, of course. The scammer persuaded her that she was assisting a criminal investigation and manipulated her on what to say.
Unbeknownst to Judith, one line in the email would foreshadow what was to come: “There is no one (other than, maybe me) that will truly suffer from my choice.”
With Judith’s permission, I asked Morgan Stanley to comment on what happened.
“Fraud is a very unfortunate industry issue,” the company said in an emailed statement. “Here, despite putting a temporary hold on Ms. Boivin’s request to send out her funds to allow us to further review the matter, and despite our concerns — which we shared with Ms. Boivin and a member of her family — that this was a possible fraud, in the end, Ms. Boivin instructed us to send her funds out of Morgan Stanley. While we deeply regret Ms. Boivin’s loss, we believe we did everything under the circumstances to prevent it, including putting a temporary hold on the transfer so we could investigate, notifying the authorities and in the end, allowing Ms. Boivin to only transfer her funds to an account in her name at another financial institution.”
Impostor schemes coax victims to withdraw the money themselves, making it very difficult, bank officials say, to stop the transactions even when they raise suspicions.
Judith Boivin says the local bank branches should have asked “a lot of questions” about her cash withdrawals. (Joshua Carroll and Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)
Judith’s scammer clearly understood that cashing out nearly $600,000, depositing it in one bank, and then quickly withdrawing it in cash would draw scrutiny. So he had her divide the money and deposit it in four financial institutions with Maryland branches: Capital One, JPMorganChase, PNC Bank, and TD Bank. She was then directed to make cash withdrawals, $10,000 or $20,000 at a time.
“The hardest part was the going to the banks day after day after day after day, and asking for these huge amounts of money,” she said.
He also advised her to have a cover story in case she was met with resistance at any of the banks.
“Well, what am I going to say?” she recalled asking. “And then he gave me the story.”
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Tell them the money would be used to remodel an Airbnb in Tennessee, the impostor said. He then provided her with doctored paperwork — an invoice for a new roof and vents ($39,600), flooring and carpets ($34,000), and other improvements from a fictitious contractor, Bradley Handyman Pro. She was to tell anyone who asked that she’d get a large discount on the work if she paid cash.
Though Judith told the scammer she was uncomfortable lying, he kept reminding her that she was working under the auspices of the FBI. Every step she took was for the good of the criminal investigation.
“I was playing a role,” she said, pausing and shaking her head. “I was following the script.”
Judith Boivin says she withdrew $10,000 to $20,000 at a time from the banks, then wrapped the cash in brown paper before dropping it off with a courier. (Courtesy of Judith Boivin)
If anyone at the banks asked about her frequent withdrawals, Judith Boivin says she was instructed to tell them the cash was being used to pay for a home remodel. (Courtesy of Judith Boivin)
Judith was directed to convert some money into cashier’s checks and ship the funds to a man in Georgia and a woman in California. But most of her savings was delivered in cash bundles, wrapped in brown paper, to couriers at a shopping center parking lot near her home. She never saw their faces.
She never wavered or felt fear because she believed FBI agents were watching every drop-off, she told me. Plus, her handler would remain on the phone with her the entire time.
Each time, she’d wait until the courier’s vehicle pulled up alongside hers and rolled down the passenger side window. Then she would step out and plunk the money into that open window, get back into her car, and then wait until her handler told her she could leave.
“After the fact, you feel the shame and the guilt and the humiliation and the self-chastisement and the ignorance. I had no idea that I was involved in something of this magnitude,” she told me.
“I’m still recovering. I don’t think I will get through it because there’s really not an end to it.”
Judith Boivin doesn’t think any financial institution or bank did enough to stop her from losing her money. (Joshua Carroll and Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)
Though Capital One said it could not go into specifics on a customer’s case, it acknowledged how “devastating” and “disheartening” financial fraud can be.
“Scams and the criminals who commit them are becoming increasingly sophisticated,” the company said in a statement emailed by a spokesperson. “We deploy a layered defense including scam detection technology, trained customer service representatives and educational resources to help us prevent, detect and report scams, including often targeted vulnerable populations. While our protocols comply with and often go beyond relevant federal and state laws, we continue to invest in building advanced technology to stay at the forefront of fraud and scam detection and better protect our customers from falling victim to these criminals.”
At Chase, a spokesman said Judith was “the victim of a very sophisticated scam.”
“Despite several attempts to get her to reconsider, she told our branch staff she needed the money for a business venture,” the spokesman said in an emailed statement. “She later acknowledged she was coached by the scammers on what to say to our bankers. The best way to avoid these types of scams is to ignore requests for money from people you don’t know.”
The advice isn’t wrong. It’s what all the fraud prevention literature says. But, as well meaning as this warning might be, it still puts the onus on a frightened or manipulated victim, who is in fraud fog.
In Judith’s case, she thought she was dealing with someone she knew — a legitimate FBI agent.
“Had they just been more personal and descriptive about what a scam could look like, maybe I would have wised up sooner.”
— Judith Boivin said of her dealings with the banks
Judith Boivin says she might have heeded the warnings from financial institutions had they provided specific examples of recent scams. (Joshua Carroll and Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)
PNC said in an emailed statement it could not comment on the specific details of this incident, adding that the institution “takes these matters very seriously, and reviews and investigates reports of fraud in line with company policy and legal guidelines.” Meanwhile, a TD Bank spokesperson said the company is “investigating the matter but, for privacy reasons, we are unable to discuss specifics related to a customer or their accounts.”
None of the warnings Judith received was enough to shake her out of the scammer’s spell. He had a daily routine of messing with her mind, convincing her that no one could know about their conversations.
Scammers create the illusion that they alone are advocating for them or are the only ones who can be trusted.
“I never felt that their biggest concern was for my potential losses, although they repeated the word scam but absolutely no context of what that could look like,” Judith said of the banks. “Rather, they described their institutional losses from other scams and how the individuals came back to blame them. Had they just been more personal and descriptive about what a scam could look like, maybe I would have wised up sooner.
“Instead, I felt like I was being judged as a crazy old lady.”
Part 4 | The FBI
A scammer impersonated a real FBI agent. It cost 13 victims $2.9 million.
This story publishes on Wednesday.
Resources for financial fraud victims
If you or a loved one has been scammed, call the AARP Fraud Watch Network helpline at 877-908-3360 or go online at aarp.org/fraudhelpline.
AARP Fraud Victim Support Group provides an online forum for scam victims. Group sessions are confidential and led by trained facilitators. They also are open to friends and family; go to aarp.org/fraudsupport.
Though coming forward can be difficult if you’ve been victimized, it’s important to notify law enforcement. File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.
About this series
This is part three of Scammed, a seven-part series that deconstructs how one woman lost her life’s savings in a government impersonation scam.
KAAN Illustration for The Washington Post with animation by Charlotte Dua and Karolien Raeymaekers. Art direction and print design by Kathleen Rudell-Brooks. Digital design and development by Audrey Valbuena. Video production and editing by Josh Carroll, Amber Ferguson and Tom LeGro. Audio production by Charla Freeland. Photo editing by Haley Hamblin. Design editing by Junne Alcantara.
Editing by Robbie Olivas DiMesio. Project editing by KC Schaper and Rivan Stinson. Copy editing by Sophie Yarborough. Additional support from Maite Fernández Simon, Megan Bridgeman and Kathleen Floyd.