Four NYU Finance Alums Busted in ATM Scam

Via Oddee

In what Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes describes as "really a beaut of a scam," four friends from the NYU finance school are accused of ripping off Brooklyn banks for $422,000. Exploiting a regulation that requires banks to repay customers who claimed their ATM cards were lost or stolen within 10 days, the four allegedly made large withdraws from their accounts repeatedly over five years, then claimed that their cards had been stolen. "The scheme was as simple as it was brazen," Hynes told reporters today. The defendants were allegedly captured by video cameras when taking the money out, but they almost always wore motorcycle helmets or other covering to hide their identities. The accused are lawyer Eric Manganelli, 36; financial consultant Lam Dang, 37; bank employee John Tluczek, 37; and his wife, Marzena Tluczek, 35. They face multiple counts of grand larceny, falsifying business records and other charges, and each faces 2 1/3 to 7 years in prison for the top counts. The scheme was finally discovered after one bank investigator called another bank and they began comparing notes.

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By John Del Signore in News on July 28, 2009 3:25 PM

Comments [rss]

billybob

$100k to pay for college. Steal $100k from a bank and get busted. America's lamest or dumbest criminals?

The Man Bat

How many different banks did they use? I thought there was a limit on how much one could withdraw from an ATM.Seems like you would have to keep changing an awful lot of banks to net that kind of loot in just 5 years.

Manitoba

This is quite a diverse group: Manganelli (Italian?), Dang (Vietnamese?), Tluczek (Polish?). Sounds like the setup for a joke - where's the Pope and Marilyn Monroe?

matty

PETER

Yeah. I, I, I...Listen, that virus you're always talking about. The one

that, that could rip off the company for a bunch of money...

MICHAEL

Yeah? What about it?

PETER

Well, how does it work?

MICHAEL

It's pretty brilliant. What it does is where there's a bank

transaction, and the interests are computed in the thousands a day in

fractions of a cent, which it usually rounds off. What this does is it

takes those remainders and puts it into your account.

PETER

This sounds familiar.

MICHAEL

Yeah. They did this in Superman III.

PETER

Yeah. What a good movie.

eriatric

that's exactly what i was thinking about when i read this too. wonder if its federal "pound me in the ass" prison?

Global Wombat

Federal? I thought that would be more of a state thing. The pounding of the ass, that is.

valeriob

NYWho?

valeriob

Hey dude, turn on channel 9!

silver

See what an MBA teaches you.

EastRiver

Most MBA grads are flawed long before they get to school.

suga7

If they weren't so greedy, the probably would have gotten away with it.

I don't understand how the banks didn't catch on earlier, being that they did this over 5 years.

I once lost my checkbooks during a move and requested a new checking number. I had to sit on the phone forever with a fraud rep to make sure everything was legit.