I had contacted several employees with US Bank, from the time that Trustee Meyers 'REFUNDED' the Trust (4/2003). Steve Stroud condoned and defended the Trustee John Meyers, who had 'refunded' Dad's Trust. Pat Grewe confirmed the rules of a Bank Trustee but Steve Stroud was NOT aware of a Trustee's duties. Trustee Meyers removed the most aggressive Asset, so to favor my brother, who was living with our Mother.
After Mother passed, they were to close Dad's Trust but they were not accurate with their accounting. I brought that to the attention of Jerry Grundhofer, US Bank CEO, Wm Williamson, Robert Webster, Steve Stroud. My letter to Jerry Grundhofer, (US Bank CEO) was passed to Sally Mullen (US Bank Personal Trust Service) so I then corresponded with her.
In our letter to Sally Mullen, Chief Fiduciary Officer, US Bank Trust Services, we notified her that even as we had finally received a Trust statement from US Bank, on October 28, 2005, there remained numerous problems and discrepancies with this most recent accounting and previous accountings for our father's Trust, of which we are the direct beneficiaries. We did not accept this statement as a final accounting for the Trust.
We were originally promised this accounting statement at the beginning of July of 2005, but we had to repeatedly request the statements from US Bank for nearly four months before finally receiving them at the very end of October. The statement we received was entirely unsatisfactory and failed to explain how they arrived at the final disbursement figures. We found those figures very suspicious and questionable since they were rounded-off to $224,000 even.
We also questioned why US Bank paid $3,323 in estimated Federal Fiduciary taxes to the US Treasury on December 29, 2004 and then another $8,030.00 in Federal Fiduciary Taxes on April 8, 2005 out of the main Trust account, for a grand total of $11,513.00 for 2004 when the Trust barely even made that much money in 2004.
We also questioned a 'Miscellaneous Disbursements' item in the total amount of $22,765.45, and a 'cash balance forward' figure of $9,308.93 that made no sense in the context of previous statements. There also remained a $634 dollar discrepancy in the balance of the previous years' statements, originating from January of 2003, when US Bank failed to deposit $634 dollars of receipts.
We were also greatly troubled to discover that US Bank distributed the farmland into our brother's name when that farmland deed should not have had his name on it whatsoever. This was only further evidence that US Bank was wrongly doing favors for him and privileging his interests beyond ours. This was a clear violation of the Trust Code and a violation of our interests as beneficiaries of equal standing.
Throughout the duration of Dad's Trust with US Bank, the Trustee 'churned' the Cash Assets, as the Trustee moved Dad's Cash Assets from Edward Jones to US Bank's Proprietary Fund (First American Funds). Only a Bank Trustee could get by with what John Meyers did with Dad's Trust.