City treasurer charged, fired

The treasurer of Philadelphia was fired Friday after federal prosecutors charged him with embezzling money from customers at a bank where he previously worked and entering into a sham marriage to win U.S. citizenship.

Mayor Jim Kenney noted that the allegations against Christian Dunbar did not involve his work with the city, but said that he had been dismissed in light of the allegations.

Dunbar stole $15,000 from two of his clients while working at Wells Fargo as a financial adviser, prosecutors said. In both instances, he was assisting customers who wanted to transfer funds and had them sign several documents, including a blank withdrawal slip. He later allegedly used the blank slips to withdraw cash from both victims’ accounts and deposit those funds into his own bank account, prosecutors said.

Dunbar also secured his U.S. citizenship through a fake marriage to one of his former classmates at Temple University, prosecutors said.

Dunbar, 40, was born in Liberia and came to the U.S. in 1988. He graduated from Temple University, where he was a captain of the football team.

Prosecutors said that while he was a student at Temple, he met a fellow classmate he later married in as part of an effort to earn citizenship for himself.

However, during the time he was married, prosecutors say Dunbar secretly married another Temple classmate, a woman from Senegal, in a ceremony in her home country in 2013. They also allege that woman, who is still married to Dunbar, also was involved in a sham marriage with a Temple student before she married Dunbar.