Federal regulators and law enforcement officials announced the unsealing of an indictment of three individuals charged with conspiring to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft related to a scheme to obtain more than $700,000 from clients of a bank in New Jersey, identified as “Bank-1.”
From at least September 2016 to December 2016, bank employee Antoinette Mitchell-Brown (also known as Antoinette Mitchell-Morgan) is alleged to have stolen bank customers’ information, written checks for thousands of dollars from victims’ accounts and initiated wire transfers from those accounts to other accounts controlled by her cohorts in the scheme, Secony Brown and Anthony Atkinson. A total of $77,000 allegedly was stolen from victims, and the defendants reportedly attempted to obtain at least an additional $660,000.
“Brown and Atkinson, among other things, paid members of the scheme or otherwise induced other individuals (some of whom provided unwitting assistance) to cash or deposit the fraudulent checks from Mitchell-Brown,” the announcement says. Participants then delivered proceeds as instructed.
Brown, 25, and Mitchell-Brown (also known as Antoinette Mitchell-Morgan), 41, both of East Orange, N.J., and Atkinson, 22, of the Bronx, N.Y., are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, and one count of aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory sentence of two years in prison, the announcement says.
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) Office of Inspector General uncovered the scheme. They and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced the unsealing of the indictment, and the release was shared today by the FDIC OIG.
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Gregory H. Woods.