A federal jury in Cleveland has convicted a former bank employee of using personal information to steal from elderly clients, including at least one who lived in the Canton area.
The jury on Feb. 6 found Yue Cao, 36, guilty of 11 counts of bank fraud and three counts of aggravated identity theft.
The Illinois man stole more than $2 million from their bank accounts, the U.S. Justice Department said.
He faces a minimum sentence of two years and a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison. His sentencing has not yet been scheduled.
U.S. District Judge J. Philip Calabrese ordered the U.S. Marshal’s office to then take Cao into custody to await sentencing, according to court records.
Cao’s Chicago-based attorney Vadim Glozman said Feb. 10, “We’re disappointed with the jury’s verict and Mr. Cao plans on pursuing an appeal.”
Cao is a citizen of China and has been a legal permanent resident of the United States for several years, Glozman said. He required a Mandarin Chinese interpreter during court proceedings and his trial, where jury selection began Feb. 2. After days of testimony, the trial jury began and completed deliberations on Feb. 6.
Bank employee stealing from the elderly
According to court documents filed by federal prosecutors, Cao worked for a Cleveland-based bank from 2015 to 2022 as a quantitative modeling analyst. He worked remotely from his home in the area of Winfield, Illinois, with access to personal client information.
Cao, without the knowledge of five bank clients ages 90 to 103, created online bank accounts in their name and used control over their accounts to transfer at least $2.1 million of their funds to his accounts or accounts he fraudulently created in their names at other financial institutions including a brokerage account in his name, federal prosecutors said. He was accused of trading with his brokerage account using stolen funds.
The transfers took place starting 2022 when he worked for the Cleveland-based bank and continued after he began a job at another bank in Chicago in June 2022 that held his brokerage account and until 2023. His new job was helping his employer build models to detect fraud, court records say.
The victims lived in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Washington, and in the Canton, Ohio area, a Justice Department said. One of them died in 2020.
Cao designated email addresses he controlled as the ones to receive any notifications on online activity and withdrawals for those clients’ accounts, prosecutors said.
Yue Cao flagged by investigators
Court records say that the second bank’s internal system in April 2023 flagged a $50,000 transfer of money from a victim’s account that Cao had initiated from the Cleveland bank to the second bank. The victim in March 2023 had reported to the Cleveland bank that the withdrawal was not authorized.
An internal investigation of Cao’s activities led to the second bank firing him in April 2023. He denied to his employer that he had done anything wrong. Cao filed a report with the FBI saying his bank accounts and Internet router had been hacked.
The Cleveland bank filed a complaint with the FBI, which began investigating Cao. That led to a grand jury indicting him in May 2024.
Prosecutors obtained the forfeiture of funds in accounts in two banks in Cao’s name. But it’s not clear how much of the stolen funds were recovered.
Reach Robert at robert.wang@cantonrep.com
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Ex-bank employee convicted of stealing funds from Canton-area senior
Reporting by Robert Wang, Canton Repository / The Repository
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
