Former KC bank teller gets prison for embezzlement, alleged partner fled country
For five years, Stacey Lyn Crail and another employee beat security at the Kansas City bank where they worked to embezzle nearly $400,000.
And they were only caught after Crail, 47, walked into the Kansas City FBI office and confessed the crime.
On Thursday a U.S. District Court judge in Kansas City sentenced Crail to one year and one day in federal prison after she pleaded guilty to bank fraud.
It was below the prison term called for by sentencing guidelines, but prosecutors agreed with the defense that Crail deserved some credit for her confession.
“Despite knowing the severity of her crime, and knowing that it may have been a significant amount of time before the bank detected it, Crail chose the path less traveled, and walked into the FBI to confess,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Casey wrote in a pre-sentence memo.
Crail’s admission also led to charges against her alleged accomplice, who has fled the country and has not been arrested.
The theft occurred from 2012 to 2017 while Crail worked in teller positions at the Central Bank of Kansas City.
According to Casey’s memo, Crail “slowly, and methodically, syphoned $100 bills from the bank in a manner she knew the bank would not detect.”
They stole packaged $100 bills from the bank’s vault and and hid the thefts by replacing them with $1 bills, according to court documents. To conceal the thefts, they falsified the balance sheets for their teller drawers, the documents allege.
After her confession, an audit determined that she had taken about $395,000.
As part of Thursday’s sentence, she was ordered to pay that amount in restitution.
