UNITED STATES ATTORNEY'S OFFICE
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI

WOMAN WHO DEFRAUDED BANKS IN ELEVEN STATES PLEADS GUILTY TO BANK FRAUD

St. Louis, Missouri: A woman who traveled nationwide defrauding banks pled guilty this morning to bank fraud charges, United States Attorney Ray Gruender announced today.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement jurisdictions spanning at least eleven states. Assistant United States Attorney Donald Wilkerson is handling the case for the U.S. Attorney's Office.

LOTTIE MAE STANLEY, 51, most recently residing in Greensboro, North Carolina, pled guilty to one felony count of bank fraud. She appeared this morning before Chief United States District Judge Carol E. Jackson.

Stanley now faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and/or a fine of $1 million dollars. Sentencing has been set for January 9, 2004. Restitution is mandatory in cases involving bank fraud.

Stanley was arrested in Virginia, on July 21, 2003, by Virginia authorities on a Complaint issued in St. Louis in July 2002, charging her with bank fraud. According to documents filed with the court in this case, beginning in 1997 and continuing thereafter, Stanley engaged, and attempted to engage, in a scheme to defraud various banks throughout the United States. Specifically, in October 1997, Stanley entered a branch of the First National Bank of the Midsouth (F.N.B.) in Sikeston, Missouri and advised the teller she wished to close a personal account and open a business account for her floral shop. Stanley identified herself as Mary Martin. The teller looked up the account information and told Stanley that Mary Martin was the third party of an account belonging to Thomas Smith and Martha Smith. Stanley left after obtaining the account number and balance of that account. A short time later, she went to the main branch of F.N.B., about four miles from the Minor Branch and identified herself as Martha Smith saying she wished to close her account. Stanley made small talk regarding the teller's hair while the account was closed and left the bank with $7,093.79. Stanley admitted with her plea that she used this technique and others, eight additional times in the Eastern District of Missouri, including banks in Ellisville, HighRidge, Arnold, Hannible and Moberly, Poplar Bluff and Cape Giradeau, Missouri, between January 2000 and February 2002.

Additionally, Stanley, used these and similar schemes to defraud banks in the Western District of
Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, Illinois, South Dakota, Louisiana, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee of amounts in excess of $800,000.