Chicago bank teller who slowly stole $180K gets just over 1 year in prison

A teller at a Bridgeport neighborhood bank has been sentenced to just over a year in prison for stealing about $180,000 in bank funds.

Patrick Galvan, 39, of Chicago, pleaded guilty last year to a count of embezzlement and was sentenced Wednesday before Judge John Robert Blakey to 15 months in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Over a two-and-a-half year period, Galvan stole the money from his teller drawer at Chicago Community Bank, 1110 W. 35th St., prosecutors said.

He concealed the theft by falsely inflating the amount of coins held in the bank’s vault, according to prosecutors. Galvan even went as far as occasionally processing coins through a coin counter to make it appear he was handling large amounts of coins for customers.

Galvan was in charge of managing the bank’s coin accounts and was responsible for reporting the total amount of coins held in the bank’s vault, prosecutors said.

“This was a serious, calculated, and deliberate crime, and the defendant took advantage of the trust placed in him by his employer to pull it off,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet S. Bhachu said.