Just in case you weren’t already aware, stealing from the people you work for is never a good idea.
Not only because it’s, well, completely against the law, but because you’re almost always going to get caught – especially if you post pictures of yourself posing with the stolen cash all over social media afterwards.
Which you’d think would be so obvious I wouldn’t need to specify it, but one man in North Carolina allegedly did exactly that after stealing cash from a bank he worked at recently, so there you go.
Arlando Henderson, a former bank employee from Charlotte, was arrested by the FBI on December 4 for allegedly stealing more than $88,000 in cash from the bank where he was employed.
The 29-year-old reportedly had access to the bank vault, according to a statement released by the United States Attorney’s Office Western District of North Carolina on Friday, December 13.
According to the allegations contained in the indictment, which was unsealed earlier this week in federal court, Henderson stole money from deposits made by the bank’s customers from the vault on at least 18 occasions in 2019. He then allegedly deposited some of it in a nearby ATM.
Authorities say the 29-year-old used the stolen money for his own personal expenses, and to ‘make a large cash down payment on a luxury vehicle’. According to the statement, he made a $20,000 cash down payment on a 2019 Mercedes-Benz and obtained a car loan for the remaining balance from another bank.
He did this ‘by providing false information and falsified documents, including falsified bank statements’, the indictment claims.
Henderson’s crimes eventually caught up with him though, mostly because he decided to share his newfound riches with the world via social media. In several Facebook and Instagram posts, the 29-year-old posted pictures of him holding large stashes of cash, and posing in front of his new car.
In one post, from August 4, Henderson wrote: ‘I make it look easy but this sh*t really a PROCESS.’ In another, less than a month later on September 1, he wrote: ‘Looking at my brand thinking this how I got rich.’
Soon, the police caught up with him, and Henderson was charged with two counts of financial institution fraud, 19 counts of theft, embezzlement and misapplication, and 12 counts of making false entries – which carry a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine per count.
The 29-year-old has also been charged with transactional money laundering, which carries a penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).