A Chicago-based banker would be prohibited from working at a bank or credit union after facing charges of overdrawing by nearly $445,000 a line of credit that was set up to circumvent bank controls, the regulator of national banks said Thursday.
The prohibition notice was released publicly by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The notice was filed in late July in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
According to the OCC, the banker – Jacqueline Brown, a former senior loan processor at GN Bank, Chicago – allegedly opened a checking account at the bank in 2018, then allegedly used an unsecured line of credit she was granted by the bank, and her access to the bank’s core operating system, to hide the loan as an employee loan.
“From approximately February 8, 2019 to May 3, 2019, Respondent accessed the core operating system on multiple occasions and performed changes to the system fields on her loan to ‘Allow balance over credit limit’ and ‘Do not report as line of credit,’” according to the notice. The OCC said she then allegedly manipulated the system to secure an increase in her line of credit (from $13,500 to $16,000), processing and funding her loan in the bank’s core operating system. “The loan file maintenance that Respondent performed in the Bank’s core operating system on or about May 3, 2019, enabled her to draw on the line of credit above the credit limit of $16,000,” the OCC charged.
Over the next eight months, she did exactly that, the OCC said, allegedly making numerous transfers from the credit line to her checking account (sometimes more than once a day); allegedly making several large cash withdrawals from automated teller machines, teller and/or third-party mobile payments from her checking account; making casino withdrawals from the checking account; and making miscellaneous purchases, including for cell phones and insurance, as well as for utility payments.
By February 2020, the bank determined she had overdrawn here line of credit by approximately $444,943, the agency said.