A man pleaded guilty to stealing $500,000 from customers at the Alexandria, Virginia, bank he managed. The Alexandria bank branch manager has stolen money from older customers after gaining their trust to personally handle their transactions.
According to the Washington Post, the accused has been identified as Fetehi Mohammed. He was a manager since 2015 at the Wells Fargo Bank branch near the intersection of Quaker Lane and King Street. Fetehi Mohammed reviewed which customers had enough money that his unauthorized withdrawals would not attract notice, got the customers to sign blank withdrawal slips and lied to bank tellers, telling them he was obtaining cashier’s checks for the account holders, he acknowledged in filings in federal court in Washington.
Mohammed worked for nearly 10 years at the branch, starting as a teller and personal banker. He was charged August 30 in Washington and accused of starting his scheme in about February 2017. He used the customers' personal identification information, such as driver license numbers, kept in bank records, according to the filings.
Mohammed, who has lived in the District and Northern Virginia, “used his position as a branch manager at Wells Fargo to ingratiate himself with elderly bank customers by providing them with personal assistance in their banking matters,” he admitted in plea papers.
Mohammed had cashier’s checks made payable to Navy Federal Credit Union, where he and his wife had opened a personal account in 2014, he admitted. Court filings stated that the checking and savings accounts were exclusively used by Mohammed. Plea papers did not detail what the money was used for but said Mohammed spent or used virtually all of it. U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle of Washington set sentencing for January 8.
