The Federal Reserve has banned two former bankers from future work in the industry after it found that they accessed customer information without authorization and embezzled bank funds, leading to financial losses for the lenders, the central bank said Friday.
Alohi Kaupu-Grace embezzled $44,000 from customer accounts and forged customers’ signatures on cash withdrawal slips and cashier’s check purchase slips while working as a universal banker at Honolulu-based Bank of Hawaii in February and March 2024, the Fed said Friday. She was terminated in March 2024 and has paid $5,200 in partial restitution to the bank.
Kaupu-Grace’s conduct violated laws and regulations, unsafe or unsound banking practices, and “involved her personal dishonesty and her willful and continuing disregard for the safety and soundness of the Bank,” the Fed said in its prohibition order.
Diamond Stinson, a former consultant in the deposits contact center at Ally, accessed roughly 15 customer accounts without authorization between April 30, 2023, and May 23, 2023, using her bank credentials, the Fed said. She gained access to customer names, account numbers, routing numbers, dates of birth and addresses and sold the data to a third party using social media and other means, according to the central bank. The customer information was then used to create counterfeit Ally checks, which were cashed at the bank, resulting in a loss of $40,753 for Ally.
Earlier last week, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced it had prohibited two former bankers over the misappropriation of customer funds.
William Shane Garrow, a onetime private banker at Tulsa, Oklahoma-based BOKF, misappropriated roughly $3 million from various customer accounts without their knowledge or authorization between March 2021 and March 2024, the regulator said Wednesday.
Amilcar A. Sanchez, while working as a branch operations manager and ATM custodian at a Long Island City, New York, branch of Santander, embezzled roughly $370,000 from the bank between August 2022 and January 2023, the agency said.
The banned bankers neither admitted nor denied the charges but agreed to the consent orders, the OCC said.
