FINANCE Bloomberg Businessweek May 27, 2019interviewed. Some clients interviewed by Bloomberg
News who settled for reimbursement say Monex
required them to file charges with the Procuraduria
General de Justicia, the equivalent of an Attorney
General’s Office, in Mexico City, where the bank is
headquartered, and to name Zavala. The agency
didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
Zavala, who hasn’t been charged, said in a
phone conversation that she’s living in San Miguel
but declined to comment further: “By instruction
of my lawyers I cannot say anything. Goodbye.”
Peggy Taylor, Zavala’s mother, says her daughter
is taking the fall. “Monex has a lot to do with this,
too,” she says.29ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
FELIX
DECOMBAT
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 dis-
patch 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 inter-
viewed 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.”
The scandal has upended the expatriate commu-
nity in San Miguel, a city of 69,000 about 500 miles
south of McAllen, Texas. Mostly retirees, they have to
navigate a society with fewer legal and financial pro-
tections than they’d get in the U.S. Fraud is becoming
more common, says Kevin Carr, founder of financial
technology firm Finiden in Washington, D.C., and
formerly the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s pri-
mary representative in Mexico. “Mexican authorities
try to prosecute these cases but often aren’t suc-
cessful.” In 2018 there were 7.3 million complaints
of fraud involving 18.9 billion pesos, about $1 billion,
according to Condusef, Mexico’s consumer protec-
tion agency. That’s more than double the number
of claims in 2014.
Monex said in a statement that it’s looking into
accusations against Zavala: “Legal action is continu-
ing in the case, and details cannot be disclosed so
as not to hinder the investigation.” Alberto Loyola,
an attorney representing Monex, declined to beMillions of Dollars Go
Missing in Mexico
○ American expats say their accounts were
emptied and Monex isn’t making them whole