Press Release
FORMER BANK OF AMERICA EMPLOYEE SENTENCED TO 116 MONTHS IN PRISON
April 14, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
R. Alexander Acosta, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and Michael K. Fithen, Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Secret Service, Miami Field Division, announced that defendant Ricardo Figueredo, a former employee of Bank of America, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck to a 116 months’ imprisonment, to be followed by five years of supervised release. During the first year of supervised release, Figueredo has to perform 3,000 hours of community service. For the remaining four years of supervised release, Judge Huck ordered that Figueredo perform between 750 and 2,000 hours of community service annually, depending upon his employment status. Judge Huck deferred final determination of restitution for 90 days.
Figueredo’s sentence follows his guilty plea on February 3, 2009, to one count of bank fraud arising out of a scheme to misappropriate more than $29 million in funds from customer accounts. Figueredo’s scheme stretched from the mid-1990s through May 2, 2008. During this time, he targeted victim customers who resided outside of the U.S. and who held accounts with large deposits, generally exceeding $100,000. A number of the victim customers had deposits of more than $1 million. Figueredo gained the trust of the victim customers by purporting to provide attentive service and, in some circumstances, by purporting to secure interest rates that were substantially higher than generally available rates of return.
To execute the scheme, Figueredo would convince the victims to delegate authority of their accounts to him, and then would conduct all of the victims’ banking activities while taking steps that prevented the victims from independently monitoring their accounts. For example, defendant Figueredo encouraged victim customers to have their account statements mailed to him by telling them that mail service in their home countries was not secure and that their account statements could be easily stolen. In addition, defendant Figueredo discouraged victim customers from electronically monitoring their account activity by claiming that on-line banking was not secure. Figueredo also encouraged the victim customers to provide the bank with his name and cell phone number as the person to contact in case issues arose with their accounts.
In sum, Figueredo misappropriated more than $11 million in customer funds for personal investments in Guatemala, Spain, and elsewhere. He also misappropriated more than $1 million in customer funds to support his lavish lifestyle. The defendant misappropriated millions more to make periodic interest payments owed to other customers or to meet requests from customers to withdraw funds from their accounts.
Mr. Acosta commended the investigative efforts of the U.S. Secret Service. Mr. Acosta also extended his gratitude to Bank of America for its cooperation and assistance in the investigation of this case. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Davis.
A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/fls. Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at http://www.flsd.uscourts.gov or on http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov.
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