Thaindian News

NEW ORLEANS (BNO NEWS) – A Louisiana Banker on Thursday was sentenced to federal prison for embezzling more than $175,000, prosecutors said.

Jeremy J. Rayburn, 35, was sentenced in federal court to 18 months of imprisonment for one count of bank larceny. Rayburn has been ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $178,224.90, which is the full amount of his embezzlement.

According to the charges, Rayburn was employed as a personal banker at JP Morgan Chase Bank from May 2006 to July 2007. Rayburn realized that he had the ability to identify bank customers whose accounts were on dormant status, because they were either deceased, or infrequently used. Rayburn was then able to override this dormant status. He then further devised a way to access and steal this money, in his position as a personal banker.

Rayburn was able to transfer funds from account to account by making counter withdrawals and forging the customer’s signature in order to generate cashier’s checks. He would then deposit these cashier’s checks into a bank account. During a thirty day period in 2007, Rayburn withdrew nearly $25,000 in cash from different ATM’s located in the area.

Rayburn at various times used wire transfers to route the money from one account to others at other banks Rayburn controlled, including E-Trade.

In June 2008, Rayburn transferred funds from various E-Trade accounts into one account, and then wired $100,000 to a JP Morgan Chase account, in the form of a cashier’s check which was then used to pay a title company for a down payment on a home that Rayburn purchased in Louisiana on the same day.

The case was the result of an investigation by the Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.