Attorney Doug
San Diego,#2Consumer Comment
Mon, November 30, 2015
Your experience, unfortunately, is hardly unique. J.P. Morgan Chase Bank instituted a program in 2011/2012 wherein they rotated Bank Managers and "investment" advisors from branch to branch to branch. These Branch Managers reviewed customer accounts and selected those accounts with large deposits AND held by individuals over the age of 65 years old. Those accounts which met the criteria of large deposit amounts held in a low interest earning account and held by individuals over the age of 65 years old were referred to a "Chase Investment" specialist and "advised" into purchasing annuities. The investment "advise" was flawed because these annuities had severe penalties for early redrawals that benefitted the annuity and very few benefits because the increase in interest rate was marginal, at best.
In short, J.P. Morgan Chase Bank and their subsidiary, Chase Investment Services routinely committed financial elder abuse against their customers by purposefully advising their customers to "invest" or purchase financial instruments that were in the best interest of the advisor and not in the best interest of the consumer/investor. What JP Morgan Chase and Chase Investment Services did was conspire and collude to financially abuse their elder customers.
As a suggestion, what you can do is contact your local law enforcement and report this as a financial elder abuse crime. Most States have specific statutes addressing financial elder abuse. In addition, you can contact your State run Department of Insurance with regulates the broker that sold you the annuity and complain. Lastly, you can contact the annuity holder directly and complain that you were duped into purchasing the annuity and would like the principal and interest earned, to date, remitted forthwith.
Obviously, I speak from experience because the same thing happened to my mother in Ventura California. J.P. Morgan Chase Branch Manager Melissa A. Griffin fed my mother's contact information to Sherrie Shruti Kohli who, therein, filled out a withdrawal slip in the amount of $200,000 and dated THREE DAYS before she ever called my mother. Sherrie Shruti Kohli then told my mother that there was a problem with her bank account and that she needed to sign some papers. My mother suffered from dementia and had no idea what she was signing. We tried to protect my mother by placing a note on each of her bank accounts to NOT transfer more than $5000 without contacting me or my brother, but Sherrie Kohli of Chase Investment Services completely ignored that note. More details can be found on herein under Sherrie Shruti Kohli, Melissa Griffin, Walter JR Traver, Richard B. Davis, Barry Hovis, Musick Peeler and Garrett.