A former Bank of America teller was sentenced this week in federal court for bank fraud and identity fraud.
Jeffrey C. Gautreaux, 26, of Peabody, Massachusetts was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton to 41 months in prison, to be followed by 3 years of supervised release, with an order to pay $ 270,295 in restitution to the bank. Gautreaux pleaded guilty to 17 counts of Bank Fraud and 1 count of Identity Fraud on February 12, 2010. He had been indicted in June 2009.
Had the case proceeded to trial the, the prosecutor would have attempted to prove that from November 2004 to February 2006, while Gautreaux was employed as a teller for the Bank of America, he used his access to bank customer data to steal customer names and account information. According to court documents mentioned in a press release by United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz of Massachusetts, Gautreaux sold the information to a non-bank associate, expecting to get paid $2,000 per account. The customer information was used by others to make unauthorized withdrawals from bank customer accounts.
More than $330,000 was fraudulently withdrawn from numerous accounts before a bank customer complained and the bank conducted an internal investigation.