Bank fraud certainly isn’t unique to Mexico, But protections seem to be lacking:
"In late December, Kathy Machir called Marcela Zavala Taylor, her banker of nine years at Mexico’s Monex Casa de Bolsa, to get cash for contractors building her retirement home in San Miguel de Allende. Typically, Zavala would wire money or dispatch her assistant, Juan, on his motorcycle with an envelope full of pesos. Monex, with $5.2 billion in assets and operations in the U.S., was woven into the lives of Machir and the 10,000 other Americans who’ve moved to San Miguel de Allende.
The transfer didn’t happen. Juan didn’t show, Zavala didn’t return calls, and Kathy and Jim Machir discovered that their nest egg was gone. When the Machirs and other San Miguel expatriates met with Monex officials in early January, the bankers told some of them that about $40 million was missing from as many as 158 accounts, many belonging to English-speaking Americans. A dozen people interviewed by Bloomberg News say that bank statements Zavala sent them purporting to show full accounts were apparently falsified. Most say the bank has told them little since they filed complaints, and some say Monex tried to settle for far less than the balances owed. “When they told us we had 6 pesos [32¢] in our accounts, I just felt sick to my stomach,” Kathy Machir says. “Since then, they have not dealt with us in good faith.”
Of course I sympathize with the expats who lost huge amounts of money, but I cannot empathize with them. Mexico is known to have a corrupt and anti-US government. If they had significant money in a Mexican bank they were utter fools or trying to hide money from the IRS. Some guy bringing the money from their bank on a moped should have been a hint, at the least.
Sadly this. I had some awesome Mexican food at a whole in the wall place. Best meal I’d had in some time. Little did I know I was making a Faustian deal with that meal…
This type of crime has occurred in American banks recently. Only difference is that the American bank squares up with the client and then goes after the perpetrator. Mexican bank? I’d be shocked to hear of an amiable resolution and their government will not care.
Remember when Panamanian went off the rails?
They had no problems with stealing money from the Colombian Cocaine Cartels, so if you follow that act to its natural conclusion.
Dealing with Banks is bad enough, dealing with them outside of CONUS is a whole new losing proposition for Gringo’s.