Former bank manager sentenced to prison for stealing half-million dollars from elderly clients

By Clarence Williams

A former bank manager at an Alexandria Wells Fargo branch was sentenced to 33 months in prison for stealing more than a half-million dollars from elderly clients, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The sentencing followed a September guilty plea by Fetehi Mohammed, who admitted to ingratiating himself with elderly customers and persuading them to sign blank withdrawal slips, according to court filings. He then lied to bank tellers, telling them he was obtaining cashier’s checks for the account holders, the filings state.

He had those checks made payable to Navy Federal Credit Union, where he and his wife had opened a personal account in 2014, according to court filings.

Authorities charged him Aug. 30 in Washington and said the scheme began in February 2017.

Mohammed worked as a manager since 2015 at the bank branch near the intersection of Quaker Lane and King Street, where he started as a teller about 10 years earlier and later became a personal banker.

He targeted customers who had enough money that his unauthorized withdrawals would not attract notice and used the customers’ personal identification information, such as driver’s license numbers, kept in bank records, according to the filings.

Court papers did not explain what Mohammed, who has lived in the District and Northern Virginia, used the money for but said he spent or used virtually all of it.

In addition to the prison sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Ellen S. Huvelle ordered three years of supervised release and that he pay the bank $509,864.95 in restitution and $38,779.01 as a forfeiture money judgment.

Full Article & Source:
Former bank manager sentenced to prison for stealing half-million dollars from elderly clients