Ex-Bank Employee Charged with Fraud, ID Theft
Alabama Man Said to Have Stolen Customer's ID, Funds In a case of insider fraud, former Regions Bank employee was indicted in Birmingham, AL this week.A federal grand jury heard an 11-county indictment against Wash Taylor Coleman Jr., a 33-year-old Birmingham resident. He is charged with mail fraud, bank fraud and aggravated identity theft.
"People should be able to trust employees of the banks where they deposit their hard-earned money," says U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance about the indictment. "When a bank employee uses his special access to steal from those customers, the employee must be required to answer for his conduct. We will prosecute these cases to make that happen.".
In a statement about the indictment, Vance reveals that in June 2008 Colman applied for a Capital One credit card in the name of a Regions Bank customer who did business at the branch where Coleman worked. Coleman received the credit card through the mail, used it for more than a year, and sometimes made payments on the card bill with money he took from the same customer's Regions Bank accounts.
Coleman is also charged with making unauthorized cash withdrawals from accounts of three Regions customers, including the one in whose name he had obtained the Capital One credit card from October 2008 to September 2009. He also allegedly made unauthorized electronic withdrawals from accounts of two of these Regions customers, and transferred the money to a PayPal account that he controlled.
If convicted, Coleman faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine for each mail fraud and bank fraud charge. He also could face an additional, mandatory, two-year prison term upon conviction of each count of aggravated identity theft.
