wire scams

Does anyone have access to a form that they use when they feel that their customer is being scammed but insists on transacting a wire transfer? Possibly a hold harmless letter? I would like the customer to sign it after I explain to them that wiring money can be a risk and that management suspects fraud on the other end. My elderly customers are persistent on wiring the money regardless of my warnings,

Thanking you in advance!

Just refuse to send the money.

Not wise....great customers, and what if our suspicions are wrong?

I'm not sure what a hold harmless accomplishes for you. If you are afraid of being sued, the customers' attorney can still assert that their poor client is elderly and didn't understand what they were signing and sue the bank anyway. Should you choose to proceed, any document should be drafted by legal counsel.

I see that this is your first question on the BOL Threads. Welcome.

So, you develop a hold harmless agreement - are you going to give it to each and every customer that sends a wire and make them sign it? So, you make customer A sign it but not customer B. Customer B is taken to the cleaners and sues you for not warning them. This is an awful sword to fall on. Either send the wire or refuse to send the wire - it is a business decision, but before going down the hold harmless agreement alley - get your legal counsel involved.

It is like a hold harmless when a customer leaves the building with a large amount of cash warning them of the dangers. You have a $10,000 cut-off and your customer that just withdrew $9,999 gets robbed and killed in the parking lot.

We refuse to send wires where we know the customers are being scammed all the time. Even if they are "great customers" - it is for their protection. I can't think of a single situation where we were wrong about a transaction being legitimate or not. I would rather err on the side of caution and hold off sending it while doing additional research and having a heart to heart conversation with the customer about the scam as opposed to having a conversation after the fact telling them they're out $10K or more. Slowing things down for research purposes can often times get the customer to better process the information you've given them.

We also refuse to send these wires out (I believe Legal added some verbiage in our account opening disclosures about our ability to refuse a transaction) and will let the customer close the account if they want. I don't recollect high value customers falling for these scams. From our experience it's the elderly who are victimized.

we have a questionnaire we ask for every in-person wire request. based on responses, we frequently don't send wires.