Marysville woman spends $25,000 in bank error, pleads guilty

Published 1:30 am Monday, September 3, 2018

MARYSVILLE — A bank error in a Marysville woman’s favor made her $25,000 richer, until the bank came asking for its money back.

The woman pleaded guilty to felony theft Aug. 27, for withdrawing all of the cash, in a hurry, to feed an addiction to painkillers.

The woman, 27, checked her Coastal Community Bank account on a Saturday in April 2017, to find it had been inexplicably padded with $25,000, according to Marysville police reports. She did not alert the bank. Instead she withdrew as much as she could from an ATM, then started making purchases at stores to withdraw hundreds of dollars at a time in cash at checkout registers.

By the following Tuesday, the bank had discovered the error. They eventually got in touch with the woman. She admitted she had spent the money on drugs with her longtime boyfriend, 27.

Bank employees signed statements about what the woman said.

Police tracked her down at work in July 2017. She agreed to come to the police station once her shift ended, but an officer watched as she left work and met up with her boyfriend in an Albertsons parking lot.

Officers detained both of them. In a recorded interview, the woman told police they blew through all of the money in three weeks, by going on a $1,000-a-day spree to buy Oxycontin and “miscellaneous items,” according to charging papers. She stated she “wanted to pay it back, however she has not made any restitution to the bank to date and has not communicated with the bank as to her intentions for repayment,” according to the police reports.

She had no prior record. She pleaded guilty to first-degree theft, in a deal that would require her to pay back the money and spend one night in jail. A sentencing date has been scheduled for October.

Meanwhile, the boyfriend wasn’t charged with a felony for the spending spree. However, he has active warrants in other felony cases involving stolen property. Months before the bank error, a plumber reported a job site in Lynnwood had been broken into, with locks cut, to steal about $8,000 in specialty tools. The boyfriend had worked for the plumber in the past. Court papers allege security cameras captured him pawning power tools linked to the burglary, while his girlfriend allegedly pawned at least one drill.

The man is also charged with stealing an oven from a new house in a Lake Stevens development that was under construction in December 2017. Just before midnight, an officer saw a car leaving the unoccupied neighborhood with its trunk partly open and a “very new double door oven” sticking out, according to charging papers. Police pulled him over. He reportedly said he’d found the $3,500 oven on the curb, and he was sweating profusely because it was so heavy. (It was 30 degrees F.) He offered to return it to where he found it. Police walked through the house at that address, and noticed broken glass and marks on the floor, like the oven had been dragged out.

When deputies booked the man into jail for investigation of burglary, about a half-gram of suspected heroin fell from his sock. He didn’t show up to his court hearings last week. So a Snohomish County Superior Court judge issued a pair of warrants for his arrest.

Caleb Hutton: 425-339-3454; chutton@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snocaleb.