GREAT FALLS — The former vice president of a northern Montana bank has reached a plea agreement after being charged with embezzling nearly $3.7 million over a period of nearly a dozen years.
Rhonda Lee Devries, 50, appeared Thursday in U.S. District Court in Great Falls to enter an initial plea of not guilty to one count each of embezzlement by a bank officer, credit card fraud and money laundering for defrauding First Security Bank of Malta.
Her attorney, Mark D. Parker, of Billings, said Devries plans to plead guilty on Aug. 20 when a federal judge is available to accept her plea.
Prosecutors accused Devries of using her position at the bank to set up high-limit credit accounts for fake companies and use those accounts to withdraw more than $3 million for herself.
An offer of proof indicates the embezzlement ran from January 2001 until May 2012, when a third-party credit processing company discovered the missing money.
“It’s a significant embezzlement from within the bank,” Montana Banking Commissioner Melanie Hall said in July, after the embezzlement was made public.
The offer of proof states that Devries used several methods to bypass being detected by the bank and bank regulators, including doctoring reports of credit card accounts for bank management so that the fraudulent accounts weren’t included in the list.
Federal prosecutors filed the charges in early July, but the document remained sealed until Devries appeared in court Thursday.
First Security, which has assets of $39 million, is regulated by the Federal Reserve Board and the state of Montana.
On June 4, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis ruled that the Malta bank was “critically undercapitalized” and gave bank president Gary Howell and the board of directors 30 days to strengthen the bank’s assets or sell to another financial institution.
Since then, shareholders invested more capital and the bank filed a claim with a bonding insurance company, Howell said.
Malta, a town of 2,000 on the Hi-Line, has three banks.