A Bronx man faces 30 years in prison after he admitted to his role in a scheme to steal bank customer identities and then use the information to steal more than $600,000.
On Oct. 26, Lamar Melhado, 32, pleaded guilty to an indictment charging him with conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
According to the investigation, from August 2016 through August 2017, Melhado conspired with Jamere Hill-Birdsong, of Camden, New Jersey, and others, to defraud a Mount Laurel, New Jersey, bank. Hill-Birdsong worked inside the call center and recruited other call center employees to participate in the scheme by stealing the identities and account information of customers who called into the bank’s call center.
The conspirator bank employees would then take photographs or screenshots of the bank customers’ account information and signatures and would send that information to Hill-Birdsong and Melhado. The conspirators then had phony identification documents made in the names of the bank customers, and used various runners to go into bank branches and make unauthorized cash withdrawals. The conspirators also used the stolen identity information to conduct unauthorized online transfers of monies from the customer’s accounts.
Melhado is scheduled to be sentenced March 7, 2022.
