An 82-year-old Whitehorse man with health issues and vision impairment is fighting to get a bank to cover his losses after his entire account was emptied out in a slew of fraudulent transactions.

Meanwhile, the bank is trying to get him to settle his overdrawn account.

More than $13,000 in total was slowly stolen from Patrick Murtagh’s CIBC account over a year-and-a-half period in dozens of transactions all marked “Uber.”

The thefts went entirely unnoticed until last Nov. 1, when Murtagh was walking by the local Whitehorse CIBC branch and thought he’d pop in to check his account.

Generally, Murtagh didn’t use the account much, just here and there to pay at places like Tim Hortons with his Visa debit card.

“I just keep putting money into it and never took money out,” he told the Star Thursday.

This time, he decided he’d take out $50.

To his surprise, he was told that not only was there no money in his account, but it was overdrawn by more than $1,500.

“(The teller) said, ‘No, you can’t have $50, you’re in the red,” Murtagh said.

This was a shock because he knew the balance should be more than $10,000.

The teller informed him that the account had actually been overdrawn since February 2023.

After taking one look at his transactions and seeing reams of charges marked as “Uber,” “Uber International,” “Uber Eats,” and “Uber Canada,” the teller told Murtagh to call the CIBC fraud department.

She provided him with the phone number – and promptly froze his account.

Uber is a ride-hailing and food delivery service that does not operate in the Yukon.

Murtagh was told by the fraud department that he was at fault. The representative he spoke to on the phone said he should have looked at his statements and noticed the activity sooner.

He is now getting weekly calls from the bank due to the overdrawn account.

With the help of his niece, Shannon Duke, Murtagh is now taking the matter to court. They filed a suit in small claims court on Wednesday to try to force CIBC to take responsibility.

Duke and Murtagh sat down with the Star to tell their side of the story.

Problems with Murtagh’s account had gone unnoticed for so long because he can’t read his bank statements. Nor does he have a computer or the ability to text.

According to a note from his doctor — included in the court submissions — Murtagh has a long history of visual difficulties, and cannot accurately read a bank statement.

“Given his visual impairment, I would certainly expect it would be difficult for him to monitor his banking statements without assistance,” reads the note from Dr. Brad Avery.

Murtagh also has health issues, and was hospitalized multiple times during the year-and-a-half that money was being taken from his account without his knowledge.

Beyond that, some of his bank statements had been mixed up with his brother’s mail and redirected to a different address.

Murtagh does have a phone, however, and the bank has had no problem calling him in recent weeks to try to collect on the overdrawn account.

“Now they’re calling him regularly to ask for the money back,” Duke said.

But for the entire time the fraudulent charges were being made, he said he received no phone calls from the bank.

Once Murtagh told this all to Duke, she decided to go back to the bank with him to try to help him sort it all out.

“So, we went back to the bank,” Duke told the Star.

“We talked to the teller and said, ‘we’re not happy with this, we need some statements, we want to see how much money was stolen, have the police involved.’”

They were connected with the branch’s client advice manager, Venkatesh Yarra.

“He was very supportive,” Duke said. “He said, ‘Well, if the money’s been stolen, you’ll get it back.’”

But then he looked up the file.

“He looked on his computer and it looked like they had closed the case,” Duke said. “He said, ‘Well, this isn’t closed, like, what’s going on?’”

The Star approached Yarra at the Whitehorse CIBC branch on Thursday.

Though he acknowledged he is aware of the case — he had been provided a copy of the small claims suit by Duke the day before — he said he could provide no comment at this time.

Yarra contacted CIBC Public Affairs consultant Josh Burleton in Toronto to provide the Star with a comment.

“We recognize this is an unfortunate situation and are working to further review and resolve the matter, given the unique and extenuating circumstances involved,” Burleton told the Star today.

After their initial meeting with Yarra, the bank provided Duke and Murtagh documents to help them figure out exactly how much money was stolen.

Up to this point, the exact figure was still unknown.

It ended up that $13,106.33 was taken from Murtagh’s account, leaving a negative balance of $1,514.03, including $113.16 of overdraft charges tacked on by the bank.

When the Uber charges first appeared back in 2022, Murtagh had a balance of $6,168.01 in the account. But because he did not know about the fraud, he kept making deposits even as his accounts was being sucked dry.

He even deposited the proceeds from the sale of his van, which he cannot drive anymore due to his vision.

Thankfully, this is not Murtagh’s only account, and his pension goes elsewhere.

The next time they went in to the bank, Murtagh and Duke told Yarra they were going to report this to police, but Duke said they were told to hold off and give the bank a couple more days to look into it.

After not hearing from the bank, Duke said they contacted the RCMP on Dec. 12.

A police officer was able to get some information on the case from Uber, but told Duke it would have to go to Ontario to be investigated, as that is where the crime actually took place.

Murtagh’s situation is not uncommon these days. According to an RCMP news release from last February, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre received fraud and cybercrime reports totalling $530 million in victim losses for 2022.

Baird Makinson, a Yukon lawyer who formerly worked for legal aid and now provides free legal information through the Yukon Public Legal Education Association, said the same.

“More of this stuff is cropping up,” he told the Star.

Though he was unable to comment on the specific details of Murtagh’s case, he did say that small claims court is probably the appropriate place for him to seek resolution.

At question here will ultimately be whether the bank has a “duty of care” to stop this fraudulent activity.

“What is the duty of care?” Baird said of the legal questions involved. “Did they breach that duty of care?”

For Duke, regardless of the legal rules, it has changed the way she looks at banking.

“You think you can go to a bank and put your money in a bank, and it’s safe,” Duke said.

Murtagh echoed this, reflecting on his choices.

“I put all my faith in the bank,” Murtagh said.

Though the RCMP could not comment on the specifics of this case, a spokesperson gave some advice on preventing this kind of fraud (see sidebar).

The spokesperson also said this type of crime is different than a physical theft of an item that police can find and return.

“Often when people have been victims of financial thefts or frauds/scams, they look to police in hopes of having their money returned,” the RCMP spokesperson said in an email.

“Although police can take steps to trace transactions to specific suspects and will follow through with criminal charges when appropriate, demanding repayment is outside of the powers that police have as part of the criminal justice process.”