Former bank employee facing federal charges for stolen funds

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A former bank employee has been arrested and charged with illegally accessing customer accounts and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Damani Brown, 28, of Rochester, is facing federal charges of conspiracy, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud and conspiracy to commit access device fraud, computer fraud and conspiracy to commit computer fraud, and bank fraud and conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

If convicted, Brown is facing a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and a fine of $1 million.

In August, a Rochester-area bank reported to the FBI that, over a couple of weeks in July and August, someone accessed the online accounts of about 12 customers and transferred funds out of those accounts.

Following an internal review, the bank determined that Brown, a bank employee, used his employee credentials to look up each of the victim accounts at the time that the accounts were unlawfully accessed.

Brown was able to see whether the victim customers had ever registered their online accounts, their bank member number, and Social Security number, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Shortly after Brown performed a lookup, a co-conspirator registered the victims’ online accounts.

Brown and the co-conspirator transferred about $477,000 from the 12 accounts to other, third-party accounts at the bank.

Ultimately, about $327,000 was withdrawn from various local branches, or funds were transferred through CashApp, prosecutors said.

Within a few days of the fraudulent transfers, a number of the victims contacted the bank to report the unauthorized activity.

In January, the FBI obtained a warrant to search Google accounts associated with the thefts. Investigators recovered verification emails sent from the bank containing one-time password codes and notification emails sent from the bank with updates regarding the online accounts, including email updates, password resets, and account freezes.