The ex-employee for TD Bank in Newington will spend 18 months in prison for stealing nearly $112,000 from customers’ accounts, federal prosecutors say.
Alexander Alvarez, 32, of East Lyme also was ordered by Hartford federal judge Michael P. Shea to repay, with interest, TD Bank the $100,805.65 pilfered from one customer’s account and the $11,137.01 stolen from a second, the Connecticut U.S. Attorney Deirdre M. Daly said.
According to investigators, Alvarez worked from January 2012 to February 2013 as a financial representative in the Newington branch of TD Bank. Starting from December 2012 and lasting to around May 2013, Alvarez identified accounts that had little banking activity, prosecutors said. He then caused the mailing address for the accounts he targeted to be changed from the owner’s address to a fraudulent address so that transactions in the accounts would not be immediately discovered by the account owner.
Alvarez then created fraudulent transfer slips to transfer the funds to another account that he believed was dormant, or to an account that he directly controlled, or to be issued in a bank check, authorities said.
Once the funds were transferred from the owner’s account, Alvarez withdrew the funds from the bank in cash or via an ATM card, or transferred them to his personal banking account, investigators said.
Alvarez had faced up to 30 years in prison and a maximum $1 million fine.
