A longtime employee of a greater St. Louis, Missouri, metro area bank will spend more than five years in prison after she pled guilty to stealing millions of dollars from the bank. The 57-year-old woman conducted an elaborate scheme to steal the money over several years, but she will now have to forfeit her ill-gotten gains.

The woman had worked for Jersey State Bank in Jerseyville, Illinois, since 1976 and had worked her way up from assistant cashier to executive vice president. However, the riches she had acquired were not due to her success as an employee but rather to bank fraud, a charge to which she pleaded guilty in federal court last fall.

By the time she was finally caught, the woman had taken $4.45 million, an amount that she now owes in restitution. She turned over two condo properties she had bought near the Lake of the Ozarks, as well as vehicles, motorcycles, trailers, a 38-foot powerboat, as well as bank stock as part of her restitution.

According to prosecutors in the case, the woman perpetrated her fraud by taking money from a certificate of deposit account, transferring money from the bank's accounts to her own accounts, and overstated expenses on a prepaid expense report. To cover her tracks, the woman allegedly lied in monthly reports to the Jersey State Bank board and also falsified information to state and federal bank regulators.

Aside from federal prison time, the woman also faces a civil suit that the bank initiated to attempt to cover its losses. Anyone in Missouri or Illinois facing federal criminal charges is often well-served to speak with an experienced criminal defense lawyer to make sure their rights are protected.

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "Jerseyville bank employee gets 5+ years for embezzling $4.4 million," Robert Patrick, Jan. 31, 2012