A former Wells Fargo advisor will spend two years in prison after faking a client’s identity to steal from their account and stealing from another client to cover up the initial theft, according to the Justice Department.
Cameron Park, Calif.–based Tyler Rigsbee pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated identity theft in California federal court; in addition to the prison sentence, Rigsbee will also pay $158,960 in restitution.
Wells Fargo is referred to as “BANK 1” in court documents, but Rigsbee worked there from 2016 to 2021, according to his BrokerCheck profile. The crime took place during this period of time, according to the DOJ. Rigsbee, who was fired by Wells Fargo in 2021, previously worked at Edward Jones for several years.
“In his scheme which he perpetrated over the course of almost two years, Rigsbee took advantage of his position as a registered financial advisor at (Wells Fargo) to target and steal money from two customers that were elderly and vulnerable,” Rigsbee’s sentencing memo read.
Rigsbee first stole more than $113,000 from an unnamed elderly customer’s account in March 2019. When that client died, Rigsbee used the identity of that client’s beneficiary to transfer all the funds from the deceased client’s account into an E-Trade account he had set up in the beneficiary’s name.
To do so, Rigsbee impersonated the beneficiary, notarizing documents to complete the transfer, which he submitted to Wells Fargo’s estate processing department. After Wells Fargo cleared the transfer into the E-Trade account, Rigsbee began incrementally moving the money into his own personal Wells Fargo account between April and December of that year, according to court documents.
He stole $45,800 from another client in a similar fashion, transferring funds out of their account into an E-Trade account he set up in their name between May 2020 and February 2021. Rigsbee would funnel money over “a few thousand dollars at a time” into the brokerage account before moving into his own.
To cover his tracks in the second theft, Rigsbee stole money from a third client, who was in her 90s at the time. In December 2020, he began taking money from this client’s account and funneled it into an E-Trade account in the client’s name.
He then tried to transfer it into the second victim’s account, but the transaction was flagged and the money reverted. (According to the DOJ, the third victim was suffering from dementia and the money was intended for her care.)
A Wells Fargo spokesperson did not return a request for comment by press time.
Rigsbee pleaded guilty to the charges in December, according to court documents.
