Vivian Michelle Titus of Woodside, a former banking executive charged with bank fraud and embezzlement of $700,000, has pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud.
Ms. Titus, 43 at the time of her arrest last June, is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 20, 2007, in U.S. District Court in San Jose.
She could be sentenced to a maximum of 30 years in prison, be fined $1 million, and ordered to pay restitution, said Luke Macaulay, a Department of Justice spokesman. She remains free on bail.
In exchange for the guilty plea, entered Oct. 5, federal prosecutors agreed to drop two counts of bank fraud and three counts of embezzlement.
She was a senior vice president at Mid-Peninsula Bank from 1996 to 2003, and a managing director at First Republic Bank in 2003 and 2004.
Ms. Titus is accused of forging bank customers’ signatures to arrange two $250,000 lines of credit and to withdraw a 200,000 cashier’s check from another customer’s account. She allegedly used the money for a down payment on an Atherton home, loan payments and personal use.
To hide account statements from a customer whose name she used, Ms. Titus arranged for bank statements to be sent to a post office box in Redwood City, the indictment says.
