A former bank employee who embezzled $655,000 from the bank she managed over the course of seven months was sentenced by Senior U.S. District Judge Roslyn O. Silver to 48 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
Brooke McDonough, formerly known as Brooke Taylor, 35, of Mesa, was sentenced on June 10. A jury previously convicted McDonough of embezzlement by a bank employee, structuring and transactional money laundering, according to a release.
McDonough worked as the branch manager of a Mesa bank, a position that afforded her broad authority over branch operations, employee assignments and cash audits. Between June 2021 and February 2022, McDonough stole cash from the ATMs and vault inside the branch. She also manipulated monthly audits by entering inflated figures into the bank’s systems to conceal the increasing cash shortage. The scheme came to light only after McDonough resigned. The discovery of the theft triggered an internal investigation that caused three other bank employees to be placed on administrative leave.
