By Khalida Sarwari
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office filed charges today against a former San Jose Wells Fargo bank manager arrested on suspicion of embezzling from elderly customers.
John Tran, 37, of San Jose, was arrested Wednesday following an investigation by the San Jose Police Department.
The district attorney’s office elder fraud unit is charging Tran with theft from an elder, grand theft, and forgery. If convicted as charged, Tran faces a possible maximum sentence of 10 years and 10 months in prison.
He will be arraigned in court Friday.
Tran was a manager at the Wells Fargo bank on Lincoln Avenue from March 2008 to February 2009. He is suspected of taking more than $900,000 from customers’ accounts and then issuing cashiers checks to his own account in a different financial institution, district attorney’s office spokeswoman Amy Cornell said.
After Tran’s employment at the bank ended in February 2009, he continued visiting some of the bank’s elderly customers whom he had befriended while he was employed. Authorities believe Tran had an elaborate money-laundering scheme in which he convinced customers to invest in certificates of deposits, but he would keep the money for himself.
Tran is also accused of forging signatures of bank customers, including recently deceased senior residents and emptying their bank accounts.
Anyone with information about the case or who thinks they might be a victim is asked to contact Detective Leonard Lim of the Police Department’s financial crimes division at (408) 277-4521.