5 Indicted in B of A Teller Machine Fraud Case

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted five people Friday on charges that they conspired to steal potentially millions of dollars from Bank of America depositor accounts through the use of counterfeit automated teller machine cards.

Charged in the six-count indictment were:

Mark Koenig, 28, a computer programmer accused of masterminding the scheme; his wife, Jacklyn Bobby, 33; her sister Bobbi Jo Bobby, 20; Koenig’s 21-year-old brother, Scott Koenig, and Robert Hussey, 28. Scott Koenig is from Lincoln, Neb.; the others are from the Los Angeles area.

U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner and Richard J. Griffin, head of the Secret Service in Los Angeles, said at a press conference Friday that Mark Koenig had obtained the ATM account numbers and personal identification numbers for about 7,400 Bank of America customers through his position at Applied Communications of Omaha, a subsidiary of the telephone company there.

According to Bonner, the elder Koenig also stole an encoder machine from the company and had encoded the customer information on 1,500 bogus ATM cards that the group intended to use this weekend. Bonner said the conspirators had planned “to fan out across the country,” particularly in the Midwest and California, using automated tellers to make cash withdrawals from the customers’ accounts.

However, Bonner said, the plan was “nipped in the bud” by Secret Service investigators, with the help of an unidentified female informant. The informant was a friend of Jacklyn Bobby who went to the Secret Service after she was asked to participate in the scheme, according to a court affivadit.

The woman agreed to cooperate with the government, the court records show, and wore a concealed tape recorder to a meeting at the Koenigs’ apartment last month. “Had the conspiracy been successful, the potential losses were in the millions of dollars,” Bonner said.

Even if the scheme had worked, B of A customers would probably not have lost any money because in cases of ATM fraud, banks customarily absorb the losses and reimburse customers.

According to Griffin, the group intended to don disguises to make the withdrawals “because some ATM machines have cameras.” He said the conspirators had targeted only Bank of America accounts in an apparent attempt to make it look like an “inside job,” thereby throwing off investigators.

While stressing the seriousness of the incident, Bonner and Griffin played down the likelihood that such crime could become rampant. “I don’t think there’s cause for massive concern about this caper,” Griffin said. “The banks have an excellent security system.”

Added Bonner: “We are confident that this could only have been done by an insider, only by a person with this kind of access.”

Four of the five people charged have been released on bail. Mark Koenig remains in custody in lieu of $100,000 bail.