Banker gets 4 years for stealing from elderly customers
Christine Lange | DuPage County state's attorney office
SUN TIMES MEDIA WIRE - A former banker was sentenced to four years in prison Monday for stealing more than $325,000 from three elderly bank customers in the western suburbs.
Christine Lange, 48, pleaded guilty in August to stealing from her customers when she worked as an account executive at Trust Company of Illinois in Downers Grove, according to a statement from the DuPage County state’s attorney office.
From 2012 to 2016, Lange transferred money from the bank accounts of the customers to her own account on 84 occasions, prosecutors said. One of the three victims, who were all in their 90s, noticed the transfers and alerted the bank and police. She took $328,000 in total.
“The crimes Christina Lange committed against three elderly women are despicable,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert B. Berlin said in the statement. “Her simple greed caused unimaginable hardship to her victims who relied on that money for their retirement and everyday living expenses.”
Lange, who lived in Summit, was arrested on July 30, 2017 and spent 10 days in jail before posting her $25,000 bail, prosecutors said. She was taken to jail on Monday directly from her sentencing hearing.
She had been charged with four counts of theft, three counts of financial exploitation of the elderly, three counts of financial institution fraud and three counts of aggravated identity theft, prosecutors said. She entered a guilty plea to one count of theft between $100,000 and $500,000, a class 1 felony.
Lange was ordered to pay back her former bank, which covered the victims’ losses, the state’s attorney office said. She must serve half of her four-year sentence before she is eligible for parole.