Customer Who Stole $830,000 From Wells Fargo After Initiating Fraudulent Payments Sentenced to Prison

A Wells Fargo customer has been sentenced to prison after taking advantage of an arrangement with the bank to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California says 69-year-old Kenneth Gould, who ran a payroll services firm, has been sentenced to one year in prison after stealing $830,000 and pleading guilty to bank larceny.

Court documents show Gould started executing fraudulent ACH payments from a client’s account to his own payroll company’s account at Wells Fargo in October 2017. Gould’s payroll services firm, which was based in Clovis, California, had a prior relationship with Wells Fargo, where the bank would credit all or a portion of the payments to the receiving account before the ACH transfers cleared.

When Wells Fargo discovered that the sending account had insufficient funds to cover the transfers, it abruptly blocked the payments and tried to recover the money initially sent. But it was too late, because Gould had quickly withdrawn those funds using cashier’s checks. Gould had promised Wells Fargo that he would return the funds, but he never did.

Says the federal announcement,

“Gould gave the stolen money to the client from whose account he initiated the fraudulent payments because he had loaned that individual money and was hopeful that the individual would one day pay him back. The client then gambled the money away.”

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