Mom of four fired days before Christmas while undergoing emergency chemo for cancer

August 25, 2024 Sharon Banks

56-year-old Bonnie Lam, a mother of four battling a rare cancer, was fired from her banking job just days before Christmas while undergoing emergency chemotherapy.

Liam claims in a lawsuit that she was terminated from her position at State Street Bank because she had accused the company of overbilling clients.

She lived just blocks away from her job at 4 World Trade Center when the 9/11 attacks occurred and believes she narrowly avoided death that day by being late for work due to caring for her then 2-year-old son.

In April 2022, Liam was diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma, a rare cancer that affects the body’s smooth, or involuntary, muscles such as blood vessels and organs like the stomach and intestines.

As the cancer spread to her lungs, Lam required emergency chemotherapy. Despite her critical health condition, she alleges that she was discouraged from taking disability leave and continued working even while hospitalized.

According to her Manhattan Federal Court filing, Lam had been reporting $1.5 million in excessive billing of clients like Bank of America and Bank of Tokyo.

She claims that she frequently notified her superiors at State Street Bank of these billing issues and system failures, but her concerns were met with deleted records of financial transactions as a response.

However, in 2021, State Street Bank paid $115 million as criminal penalty for allegedly defrauding customers by secretly overcharging them.

Lam was one of only two people laid off in her 55-person department in December 2022. She alleges that her managers thought her illness “was inconvenient,” but she claimed she knows better.

Lam’s lawyer, Shane Seppinni, expressed strong condemnation of the bank’s actions, stating, “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.”

State Street Bank has denied any wrongdoing, asserting that Lam’s layoff was part of “planned organizational changes.” A spokesperson for the bank said, “Though we categorically deny these assertions, we sympathize with her health situation and wish her well.”

Lam is seeking unspecified damages in her lawsuit.