A Mesa woman, Brooke McDonough, has been convicted by a jury after a two-week trial, of one count of embezzlement by bank employee, six counts of transactional money laundering, and five counts of structuring transactions to evade reporting requirements.
The 35-year-old McDonough served as the branch manager for a bank in Mesa between 2020 and early 2022.
According to the Department of Justice, the evidence at trial revealed that, starting in June 2021, McDonough stole cash from the ATM machines and vault inside the branch she managed. She then deposited most of the cash she stole into her personal bank accounts, using different ATMs at multiple bank branches.
In total, between June 2021 and February 2022, McDonough embezzled $655,000 from the branch she managed and deposited or spent approximately $645,000 in cash during the same time period. McDonough broke down her ATM cash deposits into smaller amounts to avoid having the banks file Currency Transaction Reports for deposits of over $10,000 in cash.