Audio By Carbonatix
Pamela Kay Cobb was systematic about how she stole. The branch manager of the Bank of America in Red Oak targeted only those customers with whom she had a longstanding relationship. When she took money from their accounts, she would fill out a fake withdrawal slip, sometimes forging a customer’s signature, and explain to her tellers that the account holder was waiting in her office or had requested the withdrawal.
Never did Cobb, 30, take more than $10,000 in a single transaction, the threshold above which banks are required to file a report with federal regulators. To further cover her tracks, she would block victims from receiving their bank statements. If a customer complained that money was missing, she refund the balance by making a transfer from someone else’s account. Tellers and customers trusted her; she was the boss, after all.
Her care paid off, for a while at least. The thefts, which started in 2002, went unnoticed for years and padded her income nicely. She bought herself some diamond jewelery with the money, plus a piece of lakefront property in Granbury, and a 1967 Ford Mustang. All told, she pocketed more than $2 million of her customers’ money.
Eventually, though, people became suspicious. That much money doesn’t simply disappear, and the feds began investigating last year. In March, Cobb pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud.
She was sentenced yesterday by U.S. District Judge Terry Means to 63 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $1.1 million in restitution to Bank of America where, unsurprisingly, she no longer has a job.
