Former banker sentenced for embezzlement

Date: Nov. 14, 2025

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

Tampa, FL – U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle has sentenced Jennifer Lamanna (Venice) to 15 months in federal prison for embezzlement by a bank employee and for making a false statement to an agency of the United States. Lamanna pleaded guilty on July 21, 2025.

According to court documents, Lamanna worked for an FDIC-insured financial institution. Over a period of months, Lamanna embezzled $280,000 from the institution by stealing funds from the bank vault. After embezzling the funds, Lamanna deposited the majority of funds into a bank account under her control. To balance out the vault and conceal her embezzlement, Lamanna made multiple large withdrawals and subsequent matching deposits out of a customer’s account. To make the sham transactions appear legitimate, Lamanna filed fictitious Currency Transaction Reports (CTR).

On June 8, 2023, Lamanna made a materially false statement to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a sub-agency of the U.S. Treasury Department, when she completed and submitted a CTR falsely stating that a bank customer deposited $160,100 in cash into his account knowing that no such deposit took place.

This case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation – Office of Inspector General. It was prosecuted by Special Assistant United States Attorney Chris Poor.

IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) is the law enforcement arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 19 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.