Midday on March 10 of last year, construction company owner Lori Schroeder returned a call from Jefferey Parker with Timberline Bank, where her company kept three accounts.
Parker, with the bank’s fraud department, asked Schroeder about several legitimate transactions and one illegitimate one. Schroeder did not provide him her account details, she said.
The next morning, Schroeder tried to access 579 Construction’s online banking portal but was denied access. So, 24 hours after her call with Parker, she visited a Timberline branch.
“The banker informed Ms. Schroeder … that ‘Jefferey Parker’ was not an employee of Timberline,” according to a lawsuit, “and the caller was likely engaged in a fraudulent scheme.”
After talking with Schroeder the day before, the man who called himself Jefferey Parker tried and failed to change a 579 employee’s login credentials three times before succeeding. He then made a rapid flurry of five-figure bank transfers, sending nearly $300,000 to 15 people.
In fact, as Schroeder was at that Timberline branch in Grand Junction, the fraudster was still at it. His last fraudulent transfer, of $140,000, occurred a few hours later, Schroeder said.
“I’m in the construction business,” she noted in a statement to BusinessDen. “After my accounts were drained, I had to take out high-interest loans to keep my projects going and make payroll. I had no other choice.
“We trust banks with our livelihoods, and they should protect their customers from fraud.”
579 Construction, based in Grand Junction, is suing Timberline, which is also based in Grand Junction and has three branches, for negligence. The company finds it inexplicable that the bank, which routinely flags and blocks even ordinary transfers, would fail to notice that “barrage of unrecognized and odd transactions” in March 2025.
Those transactions stopped only after the company’s bank accounts were emptied. The bank finally blocked $790,000 in transfers late March 11, 2025 — after Schroeder was locked out of her account and visited the Timberline branch — due to a lack of funds, she recalled.
“While Timberline Bank cannot address specific facts relating to its customers’ accounts, it denies any liability,” said its lawyer, Jason Buckley with Garfield & Hecht.
“Timberline Bank makes every effort to keep ahead of current schemes and fraud trends,” he added. “To this end, Timberline Bank notified its customers of the underlying fraud scheme as early as September 2024 and provided multiple subsequent notices.”
Buckley said Timberline’s own investigations show it “has not suffered any internal security breach that compromised a customer’s personal or financial information,” suggesting that Schroeder or 579 Construction compromised their own accounts. “Timberline Bank deeply regrets any harm that its customers suffer due to fraudulent actors,” the lawyer said.
579 claims Timberline reimbursed it $20,000, leaving losses of $278,400. Bounced payments to vendors and questions about 579’s financial health have harmed its reputation, it alleges.
579 Construction’s lawyers are Stan Garnett, Natalie Klee and Kate Leisner of Garnett Powell Maximon Barlow & Farbes in Denver, who say the 579 case carries larger lessons.
“With the increasing sophistication of internet criminals, businesses need to have confidence that banks will take appropriate steps to protect their accounts,” Garnett said.
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