The advisor who had befriended my grandfather, taken him to lunch, called him son, had done the whole thing for one reason, the enormous commission that annuity paid him the moment my grandfather eighty-four-year-old hand signed the form.
Selling an unsuitable, high-surrender annuity to a confused eighty-four-year-old, locking up his entire life savings and pocketing a huge commission, is not just distasteful, it is a violation of the advisor duties under securities rules, and the paperwork, the suitability form he had fudged, the surrender schedule he had glossed over, was exactly the evidence a regulator needed to see.
A signature obtained from a confused elderly man who did not understand what he was signing does not make an unsuitable sale legitimate. The rules that govern advisors exist precisely to stop this, and this advisor had broken several of them at once.
I did not argue with the advisor. I gathered every document, and I filed complaints with his firm compliance department, with the state securities regulator, and with FINRA, and I brought in an elder-law attorney, because a regulator with subpoena power is a great deal more effective than a phone call.
Under that pressure, and faced with a plainly unsuitable sale to a vulnerable senior, the firm agreed to rescind the annuity. The surrender charges were reversed, the fat commission was clawed back, and my grandfather entire nest egg was returned to a simple, sensible account he could actually access.
The advisor who called my grandfather son is under regulatory review now, which is the polite phrase for it, and unlikely to be selling annuities to anyone lonely and eighty-four for very much longer.
I have thought a great deal, since, about how quietly these things happen. Not with a mask and a crowbar, but with a signature, a login, a title on an account, wielded by someone the family had every reason to trust. That is what makes it so hard to catch and so easy to excuse. They count on our not wanting to believe it of one of our own. I almost did not. I am glad I looked, because looking was the whole of the difference.
The lesson stayed with me, and I pass it on to anyone who will listen. Watch the accounts of the people you love, especially the old and the young, especially the ones who cannot watch for themselves. Read the statements. Ask the questions. Keep the records. It is not disloyalty to check. It is love with its eyes open, and it is the only kind that actually protects anyone.
My grandfather has his life savings back, whole, in something he understands, watched over by family who love him and not a stranger who saw a commission where a person should have been. He trusted a smile and a free lunch. We made sure that trust was not the last mistake of his life. It was not. His money is home.