Greedy WA Man Gets Prison Time for Stealing $1M from the Elderly

Imagine that you discovered tiny increments of your cash have been stolen. It would be horrifying to find out that money has been stolen from your bank account-by the bank's branch manager!

I’ve seen hackers in movies using computers to steal pennies from people's bank accounts that add up to millions of dollars, but I've never heard about an individual doing something like this out in the open in real life. Especially not in Washington state!

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This ruthless theft happened to at least eight banking customers in Battle Ground, Wash., where Brian Davie was the branch manager at the town’s local Wells Fargo on NW 1st Street. He carefully selected customers to rob: those who had dementia, those who spoke little English, and those who, in their elderly age, did not realize he was "letting" him take their money.

HOW BRIAN DAVIE DID HIS DIRTY DEEDS

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Davie knew the bank’s federal reporting requirements regarding cashier’s check amounts, so he used this insider information to access those customer’s accounts. He helped himself to their cash by making unauthorized deposits in small increments to two fake bank accounts: one was a business account in his name and the other was a fake account he created using the name of one of his female relatives.

Davie almost got away with this devious scheme, except somehow the Wells Fargo investigating team found out. They partnered with the FBI to determine that Davie had stolen S1,279,840 from their customers.

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Davie will find out how much of his own money he will have to pay Wells Fargo back on March 18th. He was just sentenced to three and a half years in prison for his white-collar crimes. Assistant United States Attorney Zachary Dillon had requested at least four years.

Does this story have a happy ending?

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Wells Fargo bank reports they have been able to reimburse some of the stolen funds back to their customers. No word on how the bank plans to prevent this sort of crime from happening again, but one hopes that going forward, their branch managers have new hoops to jump through when accessing a customer’s bank funds.