Ohio woman charged with defrauding banks in 11 states

ST. LOUIS -- An Ohio woman said to have smooth-talked her way into bank accounts in 11 states is being brought to Missouri to face federal bank fraud charges.

Lottie Mae Stanley, 51, also used fake identities and stolen checks to defraud banks of more than $150,000, authorities told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

At a bank near Sikeston, Mo., she made small talk with the bank teller, commenting on her hair, as she used someone else's name to take $7,093 from an account in 1997. That's just one of the charges she'll face in Missouri.

A federal complaint unsealed Monday accuses Stanley of committing bank fraud on seven occasions in eastern Missouri from 1997 through February 2002. The complaint by federal prosecutors was filed a year ago.

Investigators have tracked Stanley for six years; she was arrested July 14 by FBI agents in Virginia after being featured on "America's Most Wanted."

An FBI affidavit tells how Stanley, from Hamilton County, Ohio, allegedly defrauded the Sikeston bank of more than $7,000.

On Oct. 13, 1997, a woman told a teller at a branch of the First National Bank of the Midsouth in Sikeston that she wanted to close a personal account and open a business account for her floral shop, the affidavit says.

The woman identified herself as Mary Martin, and the teller provided her with information that Mary Martin was the third party of an account belonging to Thomas Smith and Martha Smith. The woman left "after obtaining the account number and balance," the affidavit says.

A short time later, the woman went to another branch of the same bank, about four miles away. This time she identified herself as Martha Smith and said she wanted to close her account.

'Small talk'

She "made small talk regarding the teller's hair," and the account was closed, the affidavit says. The woman was given $7,093.79, and she left the bank, the affidavit says.

The bank's surveillance video images match a photograph of Stanley, the affidavit says.

In five other transactions, a woman later identified as Stanley used a false name to deposit a stolen check into a bank account. Each time she had the bank give her part of the money from the check as cash.

Using that technique from July 2001 through February 2002, Stanley obtained more than $13,100 from Missouri banks in Ellisville, Arnold, High Ridge, Hannibal and Moberly, the FBI agent says in the affidavit.