Bronx, N.Y. resident Nadia Figueroa pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing customer data while employed as a JPMorgan Chase bank teller in White Plains, N.Y. In exchange for the plea, she agreed to a prison term of 2 to 6 years, according to New York Attorney General's office.
Figueroa was part of an identity theft ring, operating between July 2010 and June 2014, that stole more than $850,000 by using bank tellers to obtain the personal information of hundreds of customers. The ring then created fake identification cards to withdraw money from accounts.
The schemes ringleader, Tyrone "Reese" Lee, and another defendant, Anthony Sug Davis pleaded guilty last month. Lee was sentenced to 4.5 to 9 years in prison. Davis received a term of 2 to 6 years. Davis also was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison in a separate federal identify theft case. The participants in the scheme
Figueroa was charged with Grand Larceny, a third degree felony. Her role in the scheme involving her position as a bank teller to target customers with common names and more than $50,000 in their accounts. She would copy customer data including account numbers and Social Security numbers and hand it over to her co-conspirators who used it to create fraudulent checks and identification documents.
In intercepted phone calls and text messages, co-conspirators spoke in code about customer accounts, which they referred to as "joints" and to the bands of money they would steal, referring to $1,000 stacks of cash. They used code names to refer to the banks they targeted, including touchdown for TD Bank and Yase for JP Morgan Chase.
Figueroa and her co-conspirators victimized customers at JPMorgan Chase bank branches, as well as branches for Bank of America, HSBC and Wachovia. She is scheduled to start her prison term in May.
