This summer, Wells Fargo said that its advisors would stop financial transactions in which they suspect there might be elder fraud going on—even if they don’t have the legal authority to do so, according to company managing counsel Beverly Jo Slaughter.

Speaking at a Practising Law Institute seminar, Slaughter said Wells Fargo sometimes has to take the risk of being sued for improperly withholding money to protect senior customers.

“We try to be creative,” she said.

She also said that the Wells Fargo Elder Services Program is working to have states, such as its home state of Missouri, give financial professionals the ability to stop transactions in elder accounts when fraud is suspected.

One of the problems the program has had protecting seniors is that some states only recognize nursing home abuse and not financial exploitation, Slaughter said.

One frequent form of exploitation seen by the company’s advisors is when senior clients come to them with requests for their money from foreign friends who just arrived in the U.S.

“I see a lot of people who come into my office who have a new, young foreign friend,” said attorney Joseph Peiffer, president of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association. “It is awful to deal with.”

Wells Fargo is giving courses to brokers on how to take notes so they have concrete evidence of the intentions of elderly clients when they die or become infirm, Slaughter said.

Finra’s senior help line has received 1,000 calls since it was launched in April, said Gerri Walsh, president of Finra’s Education Foundation. The average age of the caller is 70, she added, and the calls come from a mix of brokerage clients, beneficiaries of estates and executors.