Since 2000, Maria Rodriguez, former M&T Ossining bank manager, has been stealing millions of dollars from customers. The two victims were a 92 year old retired police officer and a woman she had known since the mid 90’s. Rodriguez wrote checks to cash, making withdrawals, and using an ATM card linked to the account. She told the retired police officer that she was withdrawing the interest from his account, while she was actually making unauthorized withdrawals from his account. A total of $1,171,357.40 from the woman and a total of $267,450 from the retired police officer was stolen. Rodriguez supposedly used some of the money to gamble at Empire City Casino in Yonkers. Police caught onto Rodriguez’s activity after the two victims noticed irregularities in their bank accounts, and after several coworkers called M&T’s whistleblower hotline after noticing Rodriguez’s suspicious activity. Rodriguez pleaded guilty to one count of grand larceny in the first degree, one count of grand larceny in the second degree, and one count of criminal tax fraud in the third degree. She also faced counts of identity theft and forgery. Larceny is the unlawful taking of the personal property of another person. In this case, the person’s personal belonging was their hard-earned money. The difference between larceny in the first degree and larceny in the second degree is that the criminal is charged with second degree larceny when the value of the item is greater than 10,000 dollars while larceny in the first degree is applied to items stolen worth over 20,000 dollars. Forgery is when you sign a document that presents false information. Identity theft is the acquisition of a person’s identity to money. Rodriguez used the identities of the victims to steal over a million dollars. Ossining Detective William Sullivan noted that first degree larceny charges are rare. Maria Rodriguez will face a maximum of 25 years in prison and will be sentenced on May 20th