Former Huntington Bank employee accused of stealing more than $100,000 www.privateofficer.com

 

KALAMAZOO, MI June 3 2012 – A former employee of a Huntington Bank branch in downtown Kalamazoo is accused of stealing more than $100,000 from the bank’s customers between 2010 and 2011, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court.

Tammy Lynn Lumbard is charged with one count of bank embezzlement, according to a felony information document filed Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Federal investigators allege Lumbard, who worked as a teller and supervisor at Huntington Bank before being terminated last year, stole a total of $108,630 from the accounts of various customers by preparing checks that were payable to “cash” and then forging the signatures of customers on the checks.

The filing of the felony information against Lumbard came on the same day that federal prosecutors filed with the court a plea agreement that was signed May 22 by Lumbard.

According to the plea agreement, Lumbard began working for Huntington Bank in 2003 and was transferred to its branch in downtown Kalamazoo in 2009. She was terminated on Oct. 26, 2010 “because of the embezzlement of funds,” the document says.

The plea agreement says Lumbard hid the theft of customers’ money by paying interest on the money taken from customers’ lines of credit and money market accounts and created “a paper trail that made it look as if her teller drawer and the accounts she was working with were balanced when in fact they were not balanced.”

One of the customers, according to the plea agreement, was an elderly person who suffered from memory problems and discovered “a discrepancy in his line of credit after receiving a notice of past due payments despite the fact that he had been making payments to the bank, not realizing that he had been victimized and thinking that he actually owed the money.”

As part of the plea agreement, Lumbard is agreeing to make full restitution to Huntington Bank, documents show.

While Lumbard has signed the plea agreement, her plea has not yet been accepted by a U.S. District Court judge. The bank embezzlement charge against Lumbard is a felony punishable by up to 30 years in federal prison.

Lumbard is scheduled to be back in court June 11 for a first appearance and change of plea hearing in Grand Rapids in front of U.S. Magistrate Joseph G. Scoville.

source-mlive.com