Former Bank Employee Sentenced to 10 Years for Identity Theft Scheme

A former Ohio bank employee has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for using confidential customer information to steal around $2 million from elderly customers.

Yue Cao, 36, was sentenced on September 17 after a federal jury convicted him of 10 counts of bank fraud, four counts of aggravated identity theft, and one count of money laundering. The court also ordered him to serve five years of supervised release.

Cao worked as a quant analytics manager at an Ohio-based bank and was hired to help protect customers from fraud. According to evidence presented at trial, he instead used his access to target elderly customers who had not enrolled in the bank’s online services.

Cao used an offshore service to create email addresses in the names of more than 100 victims. He then used those addresses to enroll the customers in online banking without their knowledge, directing their bank statements and other notifications to the accounts he controlled.

He transferred money from the victims’ accounts to his own bank and credit card accounts. He also used their identities to open new bank accounts, including brokerage accounts, and transferred their money into them. Some of the funds were then used for options trading.

The victims lived in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Washington, and Ohio and were between 90 and 103 years old when Cao secretly enrolled them in online banking. In total, he made approximately $2 million in unauthorized transfers.

The FBI Cleveland Division investigated the case. Cao was prosecuted by the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio.