Customer service staff members at Hingham Institution for Savings have successfully employed training received through the Bank Reporting Project to detect financial fraud involving elders.

Meeting in a close space surrounded by floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a group of bankers dressed in dark suits sit in leather chairs. But these aren’t closed-door merger negotiations. Instead, they’re discussing how best to keep their elder customers out of the clutches of criminals intent on stealing their money.

One hundred sixty-three banks participate in the Bank Reporting Project, which was formed five years ago as a multigroup organization dedicated to helping prevent financial abuse and exploitation of seniors.

It’s been a tremendous success, really, in two or three different ways, said Kevin F. Kiley, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Massachusetts Bankers Association. The success of the program lies in instances where crimes have been avoided because of the training meted out by program participants to bank employees regarding recognizing the hallmarks of criminal activity. Secondly, it has raised awareness of scams and potential crimes among the elderly through educational outreach efforts.

Lastly, it indicates a public/private partnership … from the standpoint of Massachusetts bankers and the state agencies involved. All of the institutions recognize that elders are potentially candidates for these types of crimes and it’s important that we work together to eradicate instances, or minimize instances, where they are occurring, he said.

The program, the first of its kind in the nation, involves several agencies working together to educate and intervene on behalf of elders before financial exploitation takes place. All of the members who convened last Tuesday for their quarterly meeting agreed it’s much harder to return stolen money to elders than prevent it from being stolen in the first place.

Participants include banks, the MBA and state departments including the Office of Elder Affairs, the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, the Attorney General’s Office and the Division of Banks.

About 50 state-level training sessions have taken place since the project was formed, with additional local sessions and re-training sessions taking place more often.

The public/private interplay stemming from outreach efforts by project members has helped in investigations, said Gregory Giuliano, director of protective services at the Office of Elder Affairs.

Before the Bank Reporting Project went into effect, we got very few reports from banks. We used to get one or two a year. Now we get 50, 60 or 70 reports in a year from banks around the state, he said.

That’s mostly due to the fact that tellers have been trained in what specific actions to take when they suspect their customers may be the target of financial exploitation either from people familiar to them, family members or strangers.

Tellers are all trained in how to deal with a robbery and we give them training sessions on regulations, said John Mahoney of East Cambridge Savings Bank. But before this program, they weren’t trained what to do if they suspected something was amiss.

Training generally lasts two and one-half to three hours and personnel leave with a rather comprehensive manual, now in its second edition, which outlines how to identify potential abuse and the steps that need to be taken to report it.

Giuliano added that because bank personnel are familiar with his organization, the level of cooperation they receive when investigating potential abuses has skyrocketed. Before, the banks had concerns about protecting customer confidentiality, he explained.

They were uncomfortable sharing this information. Now we have an elder who signs a consent form and [we] present that form to the bank. They know it, they recognize it, they respond very positively, he said. It makes our job a lot easier to investigate potential abusive situations.

We can often stop other things from happening if we get somebody calling it [a potential problem] in … I think the customer service folks and the tellers are a lot more savvy about [warning] signals, said Paul Melanson of the Chelsea/Revere/Winthrop Home Care Center.

‘Difficult Cases’
Additionally, Melanson said he does a lot of local training so that staff members at small banks know him by name.

Bank personnel are trained to evaluate their relationship with customers. If, for instance, an elder usually takes out $50 a week and suddenly wants to begin taking out $500 a week and a caretaker now accompanies them and stands in the hallway, it may be cause to ask the elder a few non-aggressive questions.

We’ve gotten a couple of suspicious drivers that were taking elders and that type of thing, said Melanson.

Oftentimes just the heightened interest in the elder’s affairs on the part of the bank may be enough to drive off potential perpetrators, who often are family members, according to Richard I. Gordon, assistant attorney general.

So we may not have the opportunity to prosecute those cases, but they’re difficult cases to prosecute anyway. We’ve prevented the fraud, at any rate, Gordon said.

The banks, prior to the project, were in a tough situation because they wanted to protect financial information but also suspected that individuals were being abused, said Susan E. Keough, vice president, branch administration at Southbridge Savings Bank. And they [seniors] don’t want to recognize it [financial abuse]. It may take them quite a while to get to that point to say ‘yes, my little granddaughter is stealing money from me, but she’s so sweet,’ Additionally, other factors of dependency may prevent cooperation. The person bilking the elder may also be providing favors like driving them to the grocery store or taking them to the doctor.

But sometimes, if the elder is mentally competent and is just making what seems like a horrendous decision such as signing over the deed to a house, the hands of the project members are tied.

There are success stories, however. Margaret R. Santacroce, assistant vice president and branch manager at Hingham Institution for Savings, recalled one of her first successes occurring soon after the project started.

I had a situation in my bank where an elderly gentleman had come in with a check for well over $100,000 post-dated three months. In order to receive that money, he had to send the organization – it was a Canadian lottery – he had to send a check for $850 to the company in order for the check to be good, she said. The customer service person questioned him about it and contacted the attorney general. The outcome was that the gentleman kept his money and, according to Gordon, kept a lot more than just the $850.

Because once you become involved in a scam like that, the same lottery will contact you and you feel like ‘well, I’ve already given $900 to them, what’s another $400 they might ask for?’ he said. That particular scam is still going on. Additionally, since Sept. 11 there are numerous fraudulent charities seeking funds and tugging on heartstrings, he said.

Internet fraud also is on the increase, said Gordon, and project members are currently looking at ways to educate and prevent that type of abuse.

Generally, elders are receptive to the idea of someone looking out for them but it may take a few tries to get them to admit they’ve been had, said Giuliano. So sometimes it will happen where a third or fourth report will come in over a period of time and finally they’ve had enough and they’re willing to let us intervene and deal with the abuse or exploitative situation, he said.

We’re pleased. I think the program really became a national model for cutting into exploitation and the notion of banks really reaching out and working with the state agencies and protective service agencies and assisting with clients that are subject to crimes, said Kiley.