Ex Casper, Wyoming Teller denies conspiracy role

A former bank teller accused of conspiring to commit embezzlement testified on her own behalf Thursday, admitting that she took money from the bank but denying that she discussed it with her co-defendant. Amanda Johnson said she took roughly $1,000 from the downtown branch of Wells Fargo Bank in order to pay bills. Her cash drawer was short on other occasions, she said, but she explained from the witness stand that those instances must have been due to accounting errors.
“I had no idea where it had gone,” she said, referring to a deficit of roughly $1,500 in March. “I had no idea.”
Johnson, who worked at the bank from August 2008 to June, said other times when she came up short — $2,000 and $1,220 — were also due to clerical errors.
To hide the deficits, Johnson said she accepted money from Erin Adamson, another teller at the bank, who would give her money out of her own drawer. Adamson, in turn, would take money out of the bank’s vault to plug her deficit, Johnson said.
In March, Adamson pleaded guilty in federal court to both conspiracy and embezzling about $10,000 from Wells Fargo.
Federal prosecutors have charged Johnson with conspiracy. She has pleaded not guilty. Her trial began Tuesday in the Ewing T. Kerr Federal Courthouse in Casper.
If convicted, she faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.
Adamson testified during Johnson’s trial Thursday morning.
“We made an agreement to cover each other, but we never made an agreement to take it,” she said of the bank’s money.
Asked later to clarify, she said the pair had an understanding “that I would cover her drawer and I would cover mine out of the day safe.”
According to testimony from both Adamson and Johnson, they both embezzled money, but did so independently of each other.
The government charges that despite the women’s claims that they didn’t know each other was stealing, the ways they covered losses — falsifying audit records, passing money back and forth, dipping into the vault for illegitimate reasons — constitute conspiracy.
When teller drawers were audited, they tried to audit each other’s, according to testimony from both Johnson and Adamson.
"It was the easy way to do it because we both knew the other’s drawer was off,” Adamson said.
Adamson said she remembered on three separate occasions giving Johnson cash out of her drawer to cover deficits of $2,000, $1,500 and $1,220. Later, she said, she made up the differences in her drawer by going to the bank’s safe and getting money.
The safe requires two codes to get inside. Adamson said she used her half of the code with Johnson’s to gain entry. She testified that she initially knew Johnson’s half because another teller had “blurted it out.” However, she also claimed that later she and Johnson specifically exchanged each other’s halves of the code.
Johnson, though, told jurors she never discussed with Adamson sharing their codes.
Another way Adamson said they would make up their shortages was by simulating “buy-sell” transactions.
It is common practice for tellers to exchange money throughout a work day if one of them needs cash to serve customers. This is known as a “buy-sell” transaction, and the acts are supposed to be documented. Both need to be present for this to happen, according to testimony, and both would need to type separate passwords into a computer.
Asked by defense attorney Stefanie Boster if it was possible to get another teller’s password for these transactions, Adamson said it would be difficult, but possible. She claimed to have not had Johnson’s password for “buy-sell” transactions.
In all, more than $60,000 went missing from the bank, according to court documents.
When in-house investigators for Wells Fargo interviewed Johnson, she denied knowing that tens of thousands of dollars were embezzled.
“They asked me if I knew about the $60,000, and I informed them I had no idea about it,” Johnson said.
Both women claim they learned the other was embezzling the day Wells Fargo terminated them — June 17.
The trial was slated to resume with closing arguments this morning. U.S. District Judge William F. Downes is presiding.
A jury of eight men and five women is hearing the case.