Ex-JPMorgan Chase Bankers Charged With Forging ATM Cards to Steal From Accounts

By Avaneesh Pandey, International Business Times

29 December 15

wo former bankers at the JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Brooklyn, New York, were indicted Monday for allegedly stealing nearly $400,000 from about 15 accounts. Jonathan Francis, 27, and Dion Allison, 30, are believed to have targeted several dormant accounts, including many that belonged to dead clients, between August 2012 and October 2013, when they were employed as personal bankers at a JPMorgan Chase branch in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.

The two men targeted approximately 15 accounts that received regular cash infusions through direct deposits from the Social Security Administration, prosecutors reportedly said. At least eight of the account holders were dead, but were still receiving checks from Social Security.

Francis and Allison, along with co-conspirators Gregory Desrameaux, 24, and Kery Phillips, 40, then issued ATM cards for the accounts without the account holders’ consent. According to the indictment, in April 2013 alone, these men made withdrawals ranging from $200 to $2,000 on 26 of 30 days.

“Not only did they raid their victims’ savings, they also failed to conceal their deceitful tracks,” New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton reportedly said Monday.

Phillips and Desrameaux, who were arraigned earlier this month, have reportedly denied the allegations, while Victor Knapp, a lawyer for Allison, told Bloomberg that it was premature to say whether his client would fight the charges. Phillips is still at large.

“I never received any money,” Desrameaux reportedly said. “I’m not like any of those guys. I didn’t do anything. That signature was fraud. I never got an ATM card. I have no idea what happened.”

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan Chase told Bloomberg that the bank has been “working closely with the authorities and the Social Security Administration since notifying them of this incident.”

“We will continue to do so to ensure that the funds are reimbursed to our customers or their estates or returned to the government,” the spokeswoman, Lauren Ryan, said.