Michael Zidell, a guy who got played for $20 million in a crypto romance scam, is now pointing fingers at not one, but three banks.
After suing Citibank for ignoring all the glaring red flags, he just filed lawsuits against East West Bank and Cathay Bank too. The guy’s not messing around.
NFT investments?
Zidell says he sent 18 transfers totaling nearly $7 million to East West Bank and 13 transfers over $9.7 million to Cathay Bank. Before that, he’d already sued Citibank over 12 transfers worth about $4 million.
The claim? These banks didn’t just miss the warning signs, they conveniently looked the other way while millions vanished into scammer accounts. Talk about negligence on a grand scale.
Now, how did this all start? Zidell met an alleged business owner named Carolyn Parker on Facebook early last year.
Sparks flew, and a month in, she bragged about making millions off NFTs and pushed him to invest.
The same old story. Over a few months, Zidell wired $20 million across multiple bank accounts, supposedly because the trading platform needed to shuffle funds through various banks due to high customer volume.
Then, poof, the platform’s website disappeared, along with his money.
Pig butchering
This isn’t just your run-of-the-mill scam tho, it’s what the pros call pig butchering, rug pull, or a romance scam.
Many names, same sh*t. And Zidell’s lawyers are painting a picture of banks acting as unwitting, or maybe not so unwitting accomplices.
They argue East West and Cathay Banks materially aided the scammers by opening accounts and processing suspicious wire transfers without blinking.
The banks allegedly ignored the obvious, huge, round-number transfers that screamed “investigate me!” but went unchecked.
Pay the price
Here’s where it gets even juicier, because Zidell’s lawsuits also accuse East West and Cathay of aiding and abetting elder abuse.
Now, while Zidell’s age isn’t public, California law defines elders as 65 and older, and financial elder abuse laws are serious business up there.
If banks fail to monitor suspicious activity involving seniors, they can be held liable, and that’s exactly what Zidell’s aiming for.
If you’re sitting at your desk, thinking, man, if only my bank caught that weird transfer, well, Zidell’s fight might just be the wake-up call everyone needs. Because when millions disappear, and banks shrug, someone’s gotta pay.
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