WICHITA, KAN. ----- A former employee of a bank in Crawford County was sentenced Thursday to 70 months in federal prison for stealing more than $2.5 million from the bank, U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said.
Cynthia Bright, 54, Girard, Kan., pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud. In her plea, she admitted she stole the money over a period of 10 years while working as operations supervisor at Girard National Bank.
Bright used several different methods to steal the money. In some cases, she wrote checks on her own accounts and altered electronic bank records so the checks would clear but the money would not be taken out of her account. In other cases she removed paper checks and altered records to post checks to other accounts.
She diverted funds from the bank’s accounts to her own accounts, and she wrote large counter checks to conceal losses.
Grissom commended the FBI and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Hart for their work on the case.
