A mother of four battling 9/11-related cancer was fired from her banking job just days before Christmas while undergoing emergency chemo. She claims in a lawsuit she was canned because she accused the company of overbilling clients.
Bonnie Lam lived just blocks from her job at 4 World Trade Center when the Twin Towers were struck — and likely escaped dying that day because she was late for work while caring for her then 2-year-old son, she said in court papers.
In April 2022, Lam, 56, was diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma, a rare cancer of the body’s smooth, or involuntary muscles, such as blood vessels, the stomach and intestines.
When Lam discovered the cancer had spread to her lungs and she needed emergency chemo, she claimed she was discouraged from taking disability leave from her job at Boston-based State Street Bank and continued to work even while hospitalized during her treatments.
She had been reporting what Lam said was $1.5 million in excessive billing of clients such as Bank of America and Bank of Tokyo, she said in her Manhattan Federal Court filing.
“In the years, months, and weeks before Mrs. Lam’s termination, she constantly notified State Street superiors of the billing and systems failures she discovered on a near-daily basis,” she said in court papers, adding she later discovered personnel deleted records of financial transactions in response to her reports.
In 2021, the bank was forced to pay a $115 million criminal penalty for allegedly defrauding customers by secretly overcharging them.
She was one of two people in her 55-person department laid off in December, in part because her managers thought her illness “was inconvenient,” Lam, who is seeking unspecified damages, alleged in legal papers.
“State Street refuses to take accountability for illegally firing Mrs. Lam, a 9/11 cancer victim. So a New York jury will have to teach this trillion-dollar Boston bank a lesson,” her lawyer, Shane Seppinni, said.
The bank denied wrongdoing in Lam’s case, and claimed Lam’s layoff was “part of planned organizational changes,” a spokesman said.
“Though we categorically deny these assertions, we sympathize with her health situation and wish her well,” the spokesman said.
