TACOMA, Wash. \u2014 Within weeks of obtaining a \u2018work-from-home\u2019 job at a credit union, a Tacoma woman used her brief employment to steal account information of customers so that others could take over the accounts and steal funds, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). <\/p>\n
Aneicia Ford, 32, was sentenced to 30 months in prison, Thursday. During the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Jamal N. Whitehead said, \u201cWhat you did was serious Your employer trusted you with access to customers\u2019 more personal information. Real people suffered real harm from the actions that you took.\u201d<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
In that role, she had access to personally identifying information about customers of the credit union, DOJ said. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 accounts, often at the credit union\u2019s branches.<\/p>\n
After obtaining increases to the ATM withdrawal limits, the conspirators obtained as much as $25,000 in cash. <\/p>\n
The conspirators would also spend victims\u2019 funds by ordering cashier\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
In all, the scheme stole approximately $345,014 from accounts at the victim credit union.<\/p>\n
Although Ford\u2019s role in the conspiracy was relatively simple, she nonetheless independently analyzed the victims\u2019 accounts to ensure a specific account would be a fruitful and viable target for the conspirators, investigators said. <\/p>\n
Only Ford had access to information such as the amount of funds available, or the age or profession of an individual victim, according to investigators. <\/p>\n
Ford pleaded guilty on May 20, 2025. <\/p>\n
Dangelo Roberts was sentenced last month to three years in prison for his role in the scheme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TACOMA, Wash. \u2014 Within weeks of obtaining a \u2018work-from-home\u2019 job at a credit union, a Tacoma woman used…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":{"0":"post-86018","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bakersfield","8":"tag-bakersfield","9":"tag-bakersfield-headlines","10":"tag-bakersfield-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}