Versione Italiana

How would you feel if you worked all your life, saving for your  retirement and when you get to 90 someone just takes away all your  money?

This Elderly couple has been defrauded of their savings at Banca Popolare di Milano, and the bank denies responsibility!!!!

My Name is Eric Bari, a journalist from NY

A few days ago while visiting my grandmother in hospital in South Africa  I heard a shocking story about Banca Popolare di Milano.

Next to my grandmother’s bed was an old man lying with his family  around, we had a chat and they told me what happened to the poor old man  and his wife, Claudio & Luciana Cavalli, both in their 90′s. I took  out my iPad and wrote the story as I felt like I have to help this poor  elderly couple.

The short story is this: Banca Popolare di Milano processed fraudulent  payments amounting to EUR 156,000 out of the Cavalli’s personal bank  account without following the normal and proper procedures, cleaning  them from all their life savings and leaving them with no money. The  bank now denies any wrongdoing and has used every trick in the book to  delay the Cavalli’s reimbursement of THEIR money.

Here is the long version:

Claudio and Luciana Cavalli are two frail pensioners in their nineties,  living abroad in South Africa on very modest means. Their entire life  savings were stolen from their bank account at Banca Popolare di Milano  in October 2011 via a transfer of their funds to unidentifiable  beneficiaries in Tokyo and Athens in 2 very large payments. The  transfers were requested by means of a simple fax containing a single  signature – the signature is of questionable resemblance to Claudio’s.   Aside from the mental anguish, only adding to their medical issues,  this means that they are now once again dependants despite having lived a  conservative lifestyle in order to save for their later years.

The couple have been too frail to travel for around two decades, and as a  result the only contact they have with Italy from a financial  perspective is with their bank where their life savings were kept. Over  the last few years, the Cavalli’s transferred very modest amounts to  South Africa to cope with their day to day living expenses and had no  other transaction traffic in their bank account with the exception of  the pension being deposited on a monthly basis. A fraudster with access  to Mr Cavalli’s signature created a falsified email address and forged  his signature on a fax instruction to the bank in order to transfer the  initial EUR 46,000 to Tokyo, followed by another EUR 110,000 to Athens.  Mr Cavalli was only alerted to the situation when they received written  notification from the bank that it had performed the first transfer.  They then immediately contacted the bank to query this transaction and  learned that a third transaction of EUR 15,000 was in the process of  being finalized which would have completely depleted their account.

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