Former Fort Lee Bank VP Sentenced To 6 Years In $1M Embezzlement Scheme

FORT LEE, N.J. — A former assistant vice president of a borough bank Tuesday was sentenced to more than six years in prison for embezzling more than $1 million, authorities announced.

U.S. District Judge William H. Walls handed down the 81-month sentence against Miye “Karen” Chon, 36, of Englewood Cliffs, in Newark federal court, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman previously said.

Chon reportedly took the money directly out of the bank’s vault, the final step in an elaborate scheme, Fishman said. She pleaded guilty in March to three counts charging her with bank fraud, embezzlement or misapplication of funds by a bank officer, and aggravated identity theft. Chon surrendered to the FBI in March 2014.

According to the criminal complaint, Chon used her authority at BankAsiana to enter a customer’s certificate of deposit account and transferred the funds — often tens of thousands of dollars — to the bank vault account and then physically removed the cash from the vault, including $100,000 from a customer’s certificate of deposit account. Whenever a certificate of deposit was almost mature, Chon transferred funds from one account to the depleted one, authorities said.

As part of the scheme, Chon opened up a bank account in the person’s name and forged checks using that person’s name without permission, Fishman said.

Chon was fired by the time Wilshire Bank, which had purchased BankAsiana, identified irregularities in the accounts.

In addition to the prison term, Walls was order to pay more than $1.3 million in restitution and must serve two years of supervised release.

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