CLEVELAND, Ohio — When Yue Cao joined KeyBank as a quant analytics manager, his job was straightforward: Protect customers from fraudsters looking to siphon off their savings.
Instead, prosecutors say Cao hatched a scheme targeting elderly victims who had no clue their accounts were being drained by a man who was hired to safeguard their money.
All told, prosecutors say Cao made off with $2 million by creating bogus online accounts in the names of these customers and transferring their funds into his own account. This week, he confronted the possible price: decades in prison.
On Feb. 6, a federal jury convicted Cao on 10 counts of bank fraud, four counts of aggravated identity theft and one count of money laundering after he was accused of defrauding 100 clients.
The victims, aged between 90 to 103 years old, lived in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Washington.
The…