POA Rights and Responsibilities?

My friend's daughter has the POA for her. However, the daughter just recently went to the bank where the account was and moved the money out of my friend's account and started a new account in her name. Is that legal? First off, my friend had no knowledge until it was too late. My friend had already spoken to multiple employees of the bank days prior to this incident, attempting to get her money secured for the time being while she was in the process of getting her daughter removed as her POA. Well, after multiple employees told her how to secure her money, that next day her daughter was still able to walk in there withdraw the money and start a new account in the daughter's name.

How is this possible? The daughter doesn't think what she's doing is a crime, because she is more or less trying to say that it's her money. I also noticed on one of your answers it says that a POA is supposed to use the money entirely on the person they are acting for. Well, from my understanding, the daughter has already spent a good majority of the money on her personal bills such as rent, etc. Altogether she probably has spent a little over 20 grand on all of these personal matters. Anyways, this is illegal right?

By Lacey