According to The Post, a widow from New Jersey who was dismissed by JPMorgan in a contentious dispute over her husband’s $53,000 pension was sent a surprise cheque for the full amount by two strangers who were “moved” by her situation.
Due to a paperwork error made by her late husband, the country’s largest lender refused to pay Elaine Silverberg, 73, the money, and she has been involved in a 13-year battle to get it back.
Two insurance executives in North Carolina, more than 600 miles away, were drawn to the grandmother’s David vs. Goliath battle in Teaneck, New Jersey, which was covered in November.
Charlotte health insurance salesman Roy Messer, 57, and his business partner Bill Rice, 57, said they took matters into their own hands after being stunned by Jamie Dimon’s penny-pinching at the bank.
“I couldn’t believe for such an amount of money that they wouldn’t want to do the right thing. There is no doubt that her husband would have wanted that money to go to her and his kids,” Rice stated.
“I imagine that for Jamie Dimon, this is like a nickel falling out of his pocket. I would like to believe that he just doesn’t know (about this).”
Messer, who was in the Marine Corps from 1986 to 1989, said that sending Silverberg the money was “the right thing to do” and that he was “touched” by her story.
I could have easily flipped the page because I don’t know her. However, he said, “I looked at it and thought, ‘What if that was my mother?'” when something like that reaches out and grabs you.
Their generosity “restored my faith in mankind,” according to Silverberg, who was left speechless.
“In this crazy world we live in, it is remarkable that such kindness also exists. I am flabbergasted at their extreme generosity,” she stated.
After Grinches at the bank rejected Silverberg’s repeated requests to turn up her husband Mel’s $331-per-month pension fund, JPMorgan insiders stated in December that the corporation would never back down.
Silverberg, a former government administrator, estimates that the fully vested cash pile is worth $53,000.
But according to JPMorgan bean counters, Mel, who worked as a system analyst for Chase Manhattan Bank until 1979, neglected to complete the required paperwork before passing away unexpectedly from multiple organ failure in 1988 at the age of 43.
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In 2000, Chase Manhattan and JPMorgan merged. With Dimon earning $39 million in pay, the Wall Street behemoth reported record earnings of $58.5 billion last year.
In order to provide Silverberg and other spouses with automatic benefits in the event of their loved ones’ deaths, the Ronald Reagan government passed the Retirement Equity Act in 1984.
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JPMorgan maintains that after Mel resigned, it wrote to him three times requesting that he elect survivor coverage. None of that correspondence ever made it to the family home, according to his widow.
According to her, pension management are only able to locate records that they claim demonstrate they were in touch with Mel in 1990, two years after his passing.
In an unsuccessful attempt to persuade the company to reconsider, Silverberg even recruited former Bronx Representative Eliot Engel (D-NY) and US Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ).
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