$700,000 Chinatown Bank Heist: Ex-CFO Sammy Sims Gets 3 Years

The former chief financial officer at Eastern International Bank in Los Angeles’s Chinatown area has been sentenced to 36 months in federal prison for embezzling more than $700,000 of his employer’s funds.

Sammy Sims, 61, of West Covina, pleaded guilty on February 22 to one count of bank fraud and admitted to stealing bank employees’ identities to open life insurance policies in their names to benefit his wife.

As the bank’s CFO, Sims was hired in September 2017 and was required to promptly disclose any conflicts or appearances of conflict with the bank’s interests. However, Sims’s scheme to defraud his employer lasted from February 2018 until at least April 2021.

Sims used bank funds to make payments towards his and his wife’s personal federal and state income taxes, pay off a debt, and even take money from the bank to pay his personal credit card balances. He siphoned approximately $81,815 from the bank using a bank credit card for personal expenses, including steak dinners and a trip to Las Vegas.

In addition to the prison sentence, Sims was ordered to pay $306,849 in restitution. The FBI and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of Inspector General investigated this matter, with Assistant United States Attorney Jason C. Pang and Assistant United States Attorney James E. Dochterman prosecuting the case.

From August 2018 to October 2020, Sims wired $86,000 in bank funds to the United States Treasury and California Franchise Tax Board to make payments towards the personal federal and state income taxes for himself and his wife. In April 2019, Sims used approximately $14,161 in bank funds to a debt collection agency to help pay off a debt that he had incurred.

The scheme also involved Sims lying to several bank employees, telling them they had to switch their bank-funded life insurance policies because of their age. What neither the employees nor the bank knew was these policies were obtained through Sims’s wife, a licensed life insurance broker who received a commission for each life policy she sold.

In total, Sims unlawfully took $737,849 of bank funds for his personal use and benefit. Sims resigned from the bank shortly after being confronted about the life insurance policies.