‘Insider’ who facilitated $345,000 bank fraud scheme sentenced to prison

Seattle –A Tacoma woman who used her brief employment with the victim credit union to steal account information of customers so that conspirators could take over the accounts and steal the funds, was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Seattle to 30 m0nths in prison, announced U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd. Aneicia Ford, 32, began stealing account information from some 23 victims within weeks of the start of her employment. At the sentencing hearing U.S. District Judge Jamal N. Whitehead said, “What you did was serious… Your employer trusted you with access to customers’ more personal information…. Real people suffered real harm from the actions that you took.”

According to records filed in the case, between May and August 2022, Aneicia Ford worked out of her Tacoma home as a contact center employee who helped customers with account issues.  In that role, she had access to personally identifying information about customers of the credit union.  Although Ford’s role in the conspiracy was relatively simple, she nonetheless independently analyzed the victims’ accounts to ensure a specific account would be a fruitful and viable target for the conspirators. Only Ford had access to information such as the amount of funds available, or the age or profession of an individual victim. The first account takeover in the scheme occurred just days after Ford completed her training to be a customer service representative for the credit union.

The personally identifying information Ford stole was distributed by 23-year-old codefendant Dangelo Roberts, who with other conspirators used it to access and steal from customer accounts.

Using the stolen account information, Roberts provided other conspirators with false IDs and used them to get debit cards and to make withdrawals from the victims’ accounts, often at the credit union’s branches.  After obtaining increases to the ATM withdrawal limits, the conspirators obtained as much as $25,000 in cash.  The conspirators would also spend victims’ funds by ordering cashier’s checks or purchasing postal money orders that they made payable to other conspirators or their associates.  They used their illegal access to transfer money between accounts and check balances on accounts.

In all, the scheme stole approximately $345,014 from accounts at the victim credit union. The victim credit union suffered that loss, making all the account holders whole.

Ford pleaded guilty on May 20, 2025. Dangelo Roberts was sentenced last month to three years in prison for his role in the scheme.

In asking for a 30-month prison sentence for Ford, prosecutors wrote to the court, “Ford knowingly joined in the conspiracy shortly after starting a new job— following training instructing her not to do precisely what she did—and she contributed to the conspiracy for months. The credit union’s electronic logs demonstrate that Ford accessed the victims’ accounts on multiple occasions throughout the course of her employment (and not, for instance, all 23 accounts at once). The account takeovers in this case could not have occurred without the personally identifying information she stole.”

The case was investigated by the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General (SSA-OIG) and the FBI.

The case is being prosecuted by Special Assistant United States Attorney Jessica M. Ly.