Police: Bank worker stole $100K from customers

KENT — A town man was charged last week after police said that while working at a bank he illegally withdrew more than $100,000 from older customers’ accounts and transferred the funds to his personal accounts.

Arron Parsons, 44, was taken into custody on Friday and charged with first-degree larceny.

Police started investigating Parsons after a representative of Webster Bank reached out in June. The representative met with Kent’s resident state trooper and said an employee, later identified as Parsons, was being investigated for reportedly stealing funds from older clients, State Police said in a news release Tuesday.

Webster Bank was not immediately available Tuesday morning for comment on the arrest.

During the initial investigation, the bank identified “unusual account activity in the form of increased cash withdrawals from the savings account of an elderly client of the Kent branch location,” according to state police. The bank reviewed the corresponding withdrawal tickets and saw that the handwriting belonged to Parsons, not the client. The bank then reviewed security footage of these transactions and determined the client was not present at the bank when the withdrawals were conducted, state police said. Furthermore, bank employees linked the transactions to Parsons through his employee identification number, according to state police.

When bank investigators interviewed Parsons, he admitted to conducting the unauthorized cash withdrawals and identified the affected clients, according to state police. Parsons told investigators that, once he withdrew funds, he would deposit the money into his own bank account for personal use, state police said.

“Parsons indicated that he felt badly about taking the funds and intended to replace the funds he had taken,” state police noted. “According to Parsons, on one occasion he had replaced a portion of the funds he had taken from one of the clients.”

Through the investigation initiated by the bank, police learned that, between February 2022 and February 2023, Parsons conducted about 39 unauthorized withdrawals, totaling more than $100,000, from five different clients. The clients were contacted by bank representatives and confirmed the transactions were conducted without their consent.

Police said the affected clients were reimbursed for the unauthorized withdrawals.

Police determined that, from September 2022 through February 2023, Parsons’ accounts primarily were funded by ATM and over-the-counter cash deposits. Several of the cash deposits coincided with the amounts of the unauthorized cash withdrawals conducted by Parsons, police said.

Parsons is free on $25,000 bond and is scheduled to appear Feb. 27 in state Superior Court in Litchfield, court records indicate.