American Savings Bank in Honolulu has reached an out-of-court settlement with a 91-year-old customer who said she was swindled out of $900,000 by a former employee of the bank.
The $6.9 billion-asset American announced the settlement Monday. Neither American nor lawyers for the customer, Ada Lim, disclosed the terms of the agreement.
Ms. Lim charged in a lawsuit filed Aug. 2 that the bank concealed or suppressed evidence of wrongdoing by a branch operations supervisor, Marilyn DeMotta, who started managing Ms. Lim's finances in early 2004. Ms. DeMotta, who was fired in April 2005, allegedly wrote checks on Ms. Lim's account and diverted the funds to herself and family members.
The complaint said that American, a unit of Hawaiian Electric Industries, attempted to cover Ms. DeMotta's tracks by getting Ms. Lim to sign documents saying that Ms. Lim had lent Ms. DeMotta the money at 2% interest.
A related suit filed by the bank's former security director, Bert Corneil, is proceeding toward trial, according to a report in Tuesday's Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
Mr. Corneil claims that he was demoted and stripped of certain duties after he refused to amend suspicious-activity reports that characterized Ms. DeMotta's actions as fraudulent. He is seeking damages under the Whistleblower Protection Act.
