Men tricked into giving thief access to bank accounts

Roger Dale Barfield moved to Charlotte to get back on his feet.

"I just wanted to get a fresh start from where I was from," Barfield said.

Instead, he and several others who have been living on life's jagged edge found themselves victims of a scam they didn't see coming.

"We were the perfect targets. I mean trying to get back on our feet, trying to let God take control of our lives," said Michael Martin, who along with Barfield is in Charlotte with a group called Sober Living America, an agency that helps them find jobs and hope.

So when a woman told them she ran a cleaning service and offered to pay more than $10 an hour to clean bank branches, they jumped at it.

She told them her name was Kesia and that they needed to open bank accounts with Bank of America.  She met them at a branch on North Tryon Street where she also asked for their account information, so that she could arrange for their pay to be directly deposited into those accounts. 

Within several hours some of the men noticed their accounts had been emptied.

"As soon as I found out I closed the account down, but I don't know what she had access until that time to write checks," Barfield said.

Michael Martin did not figure out that his account had been compromised until the next day.

"That's when I called the bank and realized they got me for $1,000," Martin said.

He later learned that someone had deposited bogus checks in his account and quickly withdrawn cash -- and the bank was holding him responsible for $500 he does not have.

"If I did, I wouldn't have been so desperate for the job they were offering," Martin said.

"They need money so they're targeted," says Sergeant Walt Bowling, supervisor of CMPD's Fraud unit.

Bowling would not talk about the specifics of the case, but said they are hoping that video from the bank will help them identify the suspect.