Search This Blog

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Two men sentenced in Birmingham, Alabama to prison for skimming Compass bank accounts

Two men Thursday were ordered to serve six months in a federal prison, followed by home detention, for their roles in a Birmingham bank fraud that took thousands of dollars from the accounts of older people.Their co-defendant had been ordered in August to serve 1 hour in prison, plus home detention, a sentence criticized by prosecutors as too lenient. All three pleaded guilty, and Compass Bank repaid the money to the accounts.Johnathan Goods, 33, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Abdul Kallon to six months in prison, six months home detention, followed by three years su­pervised release. The judge also said Goods will be re­s p o n s i b l e f o r paying $56,800, plus interest, in res­titution jointly with his two co-defendants to Compass Bank.The U.S. Attorneys Office objected to Goods' sen­tence. Peggy Sanford, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorneys Office, said the court departed from the cal­culated guidelines range in order to impose a split sen­tence of incarceration and home detention.Kallon said he believed the sentence to be appropri­ate within the goals of sen­tencing for punishment.Kallon based his sentenc­ing of Goods and co-de­fendant Justin Salter on fed­eral criminal guidelines expected to go into effect in November."Johnathan's truly sorry," attorney Joe McLean said. "He's ready to make amends by paying his restitution and is ready to start his life over."Salter was sentenced to six months in prison and two months home detention followed by three years su­pervised release and the res­titution. He was remanded into the custody of the U.S. Marshal after the hearing. Salter said he had deep re­morse and regret and apol­ogized to his family during the hearing.The bank fraud scheme involved account numbers from dormant bank ac­counts of older people, ac­cording to court documents. Goods, a former Compass Bank employee, identified the accounts. Salter would bring in withdrawal slips us­ing the account numbers for Haley Patterson, a bank teller and Salter's then girl­friend, to withdraw money. Patterson served a 1-hour sentence in August and is serving an eight-month home detention sentence.In all, six transactions involving Patterson totaled $41,800. Another $15,000 was withdrawn involving Goods, Salter and two tellers not involved in the scheme, according to court docu­ments.

No comments:

Post a Comment