The money she stole ultimately led to the credit union’s collapse. Wiretaps revealed that the defendants spoke in code about potential bank targets, referring to TD Bank as “touchdown” and JPMorgan Chase as “Yase.” A former teller at a Capital One branch in Maryland was sentenced in 2014 for gaining access to seven accounts and passing customer information to a co-conspirator who drew checks on the accounts.Īcross the country last year, cases included a former Pennsylvania teller sentenced for withdrawing money from accounts a former Manhattan teller sentenced for using information to receive tax refunds that he routed to himself a former Connecticut teller who took cellphone photos of account information, and used that to cash fraudulent checks and a former Virginia credit-union teller who took out loans from the union in customers’ names. Last year, a teller in White Plains was sentenced for her role in an identity theft ring that pilfered $850,000 from bank accounts.
The Manhattan prosecutor’s office estimates it brings at least one case against a teller per month. “It’s a rampant problem,” said Brenda Fischer, chief of the Cybercrime and Identity Theft Bureau for the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Accounts with high balances and those with direct deposits of government funds, like Social Security payments, are especially coveted. Rich and elderly bank customers are particularly at risk, prosecutors say, when tellers and other retail-branch employees tap into accounts to wire funds without authorization, make fake debit cards to withdraw money from A.T.M.s and sell off personal information to other criminals. But A.T.M.s, direct deposits and electronic banking have diminished tellers’ importance, to the point that their work is now low paid and, prosecutors say, occasionally criminal. Tellers and those who oversaw them once played a sober, respected role in towns small and large, carefully counting out bills and peering at signatures. Though much of the focus on bank fraud has been on sophisticated hackers, it is the more prosaic figure of the teller behind the window who should worry depositors, according to prosecutors, government officials and security experts. Today, the thieves may be on the other side of the counter.Īs concerns over identity theft and foreign cyberattacks rise, customers are largely in the dark about a growing threat just around the corner: bank tellers and managers with instant access not only to their critical personal information, but also to their cash. Bank robbers used to burst into banks brandishing guns and bearing notes demanding cash to the teller behind the window.
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