06/09/2026
Justice Served: Law Firms Win Nearly $4 Million Against a Large National Bank in AAA Arbitration
We are proud to share that our firm, Kaplan Rothstein Prüss Peraza, P.A., alongside co-counsel at Levin Law P.A., secured a victory for our client against a large national bank (the "Bank"). A three-member AAA Commercial Arbitration panel awarded our client nearly $4 million after finding that the Bank breached its account agreement and the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing — failures that allowed our client’s rogue employee to embezzle more than $8.5 million from our client’s accounts in a matter of days. (In addition to our nearly $4 million recovery, our client already had recovered several million dollars from collateral sources.)
The rogue employee removed a co-signatory from our client’s Bank account, opened a shadow account at the Bank, and stole more than $8.5 million through fraudulent checks and wire transfers. Our client provided the Bank with five fraud notices over twelve days, including a hand-delivered adverse claim notice under California law demanding that the bank freeze all account activity, but the Bank ignored the fraud notices.
The Bank refused to entertain settlement, hiding behind California’s bank-friendly statutory framework as a shield from liability. The Bank's defense was straightforward: Because the rogue employee was an authorized account signor, the bank could follow her instructions without question or consequence, no matter how many fraud warnings it received. We believed the Bank's position was legally flawed and factually untenable, and the arbitrators agreed, finding the Bank liable.
The Bank underestimated our legal analysis, preparation, and resolve. We developed a comprehensive strategy that attacked the case on multiple fronts, anticipating and dismantling every defense the Bank raised. Evidence of the Bank's internal policies and expert testimony on banking industry standards created a record of the Bank's systemic failures that caused our client devastating losses.
This victory is a reminder that the country’s largest financial institutions are not above the law. When a bank receives repeated warnings that a customer’s funds are being stolen, it may have a legal and contractual obligation to act—not look the other way while millions of dollars flow out the door.
We appreciate our client’s trust throughout the case; We are grateful to the arbitration panel for its careful and thorough analysis; and We are proud to deliver justice for our client. If you have a client who has suffered losses as a result of a bank’s failure to respond to fraud, we would welcome the opportunity to speak with you about how we might be able to help.
