A former bank employee will spend the next six years behind bars after draining hundreds of thousands of dollars from customer accounts.
Ex-First National Bank of Commerce employee and Pocahontas, Arkansas resident Heather Pankey pleaded guilty to theft of property, financial identity fraud, first-degree forgery and computer fraud after stealing a total of $257,594.77 from customer accounts, reports the ABC affiliate KAIT8 News.
Investigators say Pankey used her position as a bank insider to access customer accounts and transfer funds to a joint account that she shared with her grandmother. To obfuscate the transactions, Pankey would shift funds from one customer account to another. According to the investigators, Pankey withdrew funds from at least eight customer accounts without authorization.
Authorities say Pankey’s scheme was initially uncovered on March 20th after she used a colleague’s login credentials without consent to move funds from a customer account. The transaction did not go through, which alerted the bank to the suspicious activity.
Says Sgt. Trason Johnson of the Pocahontas Police Department,
“The initial red flag appeared when a transaction was initiated on a deceased customer’s account and failed to post.”
In a statement, Pankey says she only “borrowed money” from customers whom she knew wouldn’t need it at the time.
On top of spending 72 months in jail, Circuit Court Judge Rob Ratton handed Pankey an additional 168 months of suspended imposition of sentence (SIS) and ordered her to make First National Bank of Commerce whole.
Pankey has already shelled out $125,000 in restitution to the bank and must pay the remaining $132,594.77 by the end of her SIS.
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