Dan Browning reports:
Two former bankers convicted of aggravated identity theft and helping an international crime organization based in the Twin Cities to bilk more than $50 million from U.S. banks apologized for their crimes Wednesday and pleaded with a judge to go easy on them.
But Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Davis flatly rejected the idea.
[…]
Michael Padden, the attorney representing former Wells Fargo banker Fawsiyo Hassan Farah, 43, of Brooklyn Park, said his client had no prior criminal record and played a minor role in the conspiracy. He said she made only about $1,000 for giving the crime ring information and opening a bank account at Wells Fargo that was used to steal $94,500. He asked that she be sentenced to probation.
Lucas Wilson, the attorney representing Michael Kweku Asibu, 38, a former Eagan resident now living in Waterbury, Conn., said his client’s participation in the fraud ring was not motivated greed, but rather, by the need to help his ailing parents in Ghana. Asibu had been a personal banker at Bremer Bank and Associated Bank. He pleaded guilty in 2011 to embezzling money from certificates of deposit, money market accounts, savings and checking accounts.
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