Citibank Should Pay Again Tens of millions To Stroke Sufferer

[ad_1] by Nahlah Abdur-Rahman January 4, 2026

A NYC decide ordered Citibank to offer Leileth Faye Graham, an 80-year-old girl, nearly $3.5 million.

Citibank must pay a stroke sufferer hundreds of thousands after no taking the right streps to recovering the fraudulent prices made to her account.

A Queens Supreme Court docket Justice Bernice Siegal ordered Citibank to offer Leileth Faye Graham, an 80-year-old girl from the New York borough, nearly $3.5 million within the groundbreaking resolution made Dec. 19.

Decide Siegel additionally discovered the financial institution chargeable for “concealing essential proof” all through the court docket case. The financial institution refused to refund the a whole lot of hundreds stolen from Graham’s account, hiding proof that proved the fraud.

Roughly $135,000 of the stolen quantity, which totaling to $772,000, got here from 211 withdrawals in Massachusetts. Based on The New York Publish, Graham’s niece, Joan Hope Bowden, allegedly made the withdrawals as her aunt laid bedridden and blind states away.

One other $638,000 was snatched from Graham by means of wire transfers. Though the withdrawals confirmed clear indicators of fraudulent exercise, Citibank allowed the faux transactions to proceed. Bowden reportedly used the cash to fund holidays to Jamaica, purchase property in Washington, D.C., for her daughter, and provides cash away to different members of the family.

Citibank should now return the cash, and add for a pair million, “for failure to analyze or to return the funds faraway from [her] account with out consent or authority.”

“Had Citibank correctly adopted its personal safety procedures on the Citibank accounts following the ATM withdrawals, the account would have been flagged, thereby stopping the following wire transfers,” detailed the court docket in its resolution.

Nevertheless, Citibank has denied any wrongdoing within the matter and has appealed the court docket ruling. Regardless of this, Graham’s household hopes to obtain not less than among the court-ordered damages, claiming all of it should go to their elder’s care.

“My hope is that one thing will come by means of, in order that she will get to take pleasure in one thing out of it earlier than she passes away,” stated Graham’s different niece, Ingrid Gayle, who assists in her caretaking.

Born in Jamaica within the Seventies, Graham emigrated to the U.S. to finish her training. She earned her diploma in enterprise administration from Manhattan Faculty in 1984, adopted by her bachelor’s diploma from Tempo Faculty eight years later. Throughout her skilled profession, she as soon as labored as a authorized secretary for a agency that had Citibank as a shopper.

In 2020, nonetheless, her well being took a flip when she suffered from a stroke. After discovering her residing and well being circumstances in a dire state, Gayle started to supervise her care.

Now, Gayle hopes for justice on behalf of her aged aunt. Nevertheless, the case might also be monumental because it units a precedent that banks are chargeable for unauthorized transactions, not the client. Within the meantime, the household hopes that Citibank will refund this cash to Graham, who at the moment makes use of Medicaid to cowl her bills.

Gayle added, “As a result of that may actually be unhappy, that we battle for her to get again her cash, and that she doesn’t even get to take pleasure in a thousand of it.”