A former First Community Bank vice president has been sentenced to five years in prison and five years of supervised release for embezzlement, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
The ex-banker, Kellie L. Johnson, of Cullman, Alabama, pleaded guilty in May to embezzling about $2.3 million between July 2013 and June 2023. She worked at First Community Bank for nearly 25 years.
Johnson diverted money from the bank's Federal Reserve account to pay personal expenses, primarily credit card bills. She made roughly 273 fraudulent ACH transactions over 10 years, the DOJ said.
“To conceal her scheme, Johnson falsified transactions to reconcile the balance of the Federal Reserve account in the bank’s general ledger and deleted her ACH transactions,” the DOJ said.
The fraud was discovered when the Fed contacted the bank president about an overdrawn ACH account. When questioned, Johnson provided a fraudulent statement showing a positive balance. The scheme additionally cost the bank $138,185.40 in lost interest income from the Fed account.
