Judge: Woman faces jail if she doesn’t pay restitution

STAMFORD — A former bank teller convicted of aiding of fraudulent check cashing scheme that cost a local bank about $45,000 has until May 1 to pay back at least $10,000 or she could face up to five years in prison, according to a state prosecutor.

Marya Lira, 30, of Stamford, appeared at the state Superior Court in Stamford on Tuesday with $500 to pay in restitution. Her attorney Howard Ehring said she should have an additional $1,000 by the end of the week.

According to Assistant State’s Attorney Margaret Moscati, the outstanding amount of restitution owed to the defrauded bank, however, still sits just north of $30,000.

Judge John Blawie said Tuesday that while he doesn’t expect Lira to pay back the restitution in full, she would need to pay back at least the $10,000 to avoid going to a violation of probation hearing.

Lira was convicted of first-degree larceny in June 2018.

Lira, a former teller at a Chase bank on High Ridge Road, was arrested in 2015 for allegedly processing $45,000 worth of counterfeit checks.

When police interviewed Lira, she told them a man she had been seeing since March 2014 asked her if she wanted to make a lot of money. Lira said the man and another person sent people to the bank with counterfeit checks who they would direct to Lira. Lira said she would get a text from the first man with a description of the alleged bogus check holders, police said.

Lira told police she believed the two men had done this in the past.

She also told police the checks were obvious fakes, but she was able to cash them by using legitimate bank account numbers. Because Chase was responsible for the withdrawals, the only victim in the case was to be Chase, police said.

Lira allegedly cashed 14 of the checks from June 12 to 24, 2014. They were drawn from accounts belonging to Chase, People’s United Bank, Sikorsky Federal Credit Union, Bank of America, Citizens Bank, City Bank and Webster Bank, police said.