Bank Teller

When the American Idol competition was in its earliest stages, Lakisha Jones offered a tantalizing plum to four of her friends from a Millersville bank branch -- tickets to a live broadcast. For March 27 and 28. So as far back as late February, the 27-year-old former bank teller from Fort Meade with the powerhouse voice thought she could make it into the Top 10 contestants. ON TV American Idol airs at 8 tonight and 9 p.m. tomorrow on WBFF (Channel 45).

It was going to be the perfect computer crime, orchestrated with elaborate Internet planning: $16.8 million would be wired to Eastern Europe and the two thieves would vanish with new identities.But in the end, it was a Baltimore bank teller and a security officer just doing their jobs that foiled a high-tech international money-laundering scheme."Something didn't look quite right," said Richard Parker, the security officer for NationsBank who helped identify a series of suspicious transactions in September 1996 that sparked an overseas "cyberbanking" investigation.

Richard Gatney could make something out of what seemed to be nothing. For instance, he'd take a discarded soup can and turn it into a shelved jewelry case. Or he'd carve into a rusted pipe and soon have an ivy planter.He spent many afternoons at junkyards and considerable time sifting through trash bins.Mr. Gatney, 72, who died Wednesday of heart failure while at his brother's home in Hartford, Conn., considered his fascination with forgotten and broken items a "cheap hobby that anybody could play," his brother said.

A bank teller's two children were abducted from their Pimlico neighborhood yesterday and safely released after their mother paid ransom money obtained from the bank, city police said.No one involved in the kidnapping was harmed, but federal authorities were frantically searching for two men who last were seen in a white van with large windows and New Jersey license plates.Authorities would not say how much money the teller gave the men."It certainly appears that the victim in this case was an intended target and that it was a well thought out, orchestrated execution of a crime," said Agent Robert W. Weinhold Jr., a city police spokesman.

A recent Monday morning, Rob Hayes, a Navy man stationed at Fort Meade, walked into a nearby bank and tried to deposit $400 -- cash money. It wasn't easy. It was bizarro. "I can't count the money," a teller told Hayes, the only customer at the branch at the time.Hayes had a real head-scratcher on his hands: A teller who couldn't count? A bank that didn't want cash? He was perplexed. But persistent. He asked again to make the deposit. The teller asked if all the bills were ones."No," Hayes answered.

Thanksgiving is a time of traditions, and there is no tradition more meaningful than the annual U.S. Department of Agriculture warning about fatal food-dwelling bacteria.This year, I'm pleased to report, the department has outdone itself: For the first time ever, the department has officially advised Americans not to stuff their turkeys.Many alert readers sent in an Associated Press item in which the acting director of the Agriculture Department's Meat and Poultry Hot Line -- whose name is (I am not making any of this up)

A would-be robber who handed a Signet Bank teller a note Saturday afternoon and walked away empty-handed might want to be more careful about how he phrases his demand the next time.The man walked into the bank in the 500 block of Crain Highway about 12:05 p.m. He gave the teller a note that ordered her to give him "all the unbanded fives and tens." The clerk said she didn't have any and told the man to get out of the bank, police said.The man took his note and left the bank. Another man came in the bank and stood in the lobby for a few minutes.

For Tarsha Fountain, 21 and mother of an 11-month-old daughter, a brief stay at a Baltimore County homeless shelter actually was an improvement in her shattered life."

As part of the movement sweeping the banking industry to supplant branch workers with automated services, the nation's 10th-largest bank announced yesterday a broad-ranging plan to charge some customers as much as $3 each time they use a human teller.Under the plan, First Chicago Corp. said, customers who choose a checking account that does not require a minimum balance would pay the fee if they went to a teller when they could have completed the same transaction using an automated teller machine or telephone banking system.

Walter D. Stockbridge, who worked his way up from a bank teller to a vice presidency, died Wednesday of a massive heart attack at Greater Baltimore Medical Center.The Riderwood resident was 76.He began his 46-year banking career as a teller at Eutaw Savings Bank on Eutaw and Fayette streets in downtown Baltimore and later became a vice president.When Eutaw Savings merged with Maryland National Bank in 1974, he was named vice president of the residential mortgage department. He retired in 1983.

Judith A. Shadrick, a retired bank teller and an outdoorswoman, died of breast cancer July 9 at her Ellicott City home. She was 61. Judith Ann Webster was born in Takoma Park and raised in College Park. She was a 1965 graduate of High Point High School in Beltsville and attended the University of Maryland. Mrs. Shadrick, who worked as a teller at the Columbia Bank branch on Route 40 in Ellicott City, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993. She was an avid gardener and animal lover, family members said.

A Silver Spring man was being held yesterday after being charged in a bank robbery that resulted in the shooting of a teller Thursday morning in Howard County. As Anirudh Lakhan Sukhu made an initial appearance yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, a third suspect remained at large. Police were able to track down Sukhu after discovering his identification in a black Ford pickup the suspects abandoned after fleeing the bank, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court.

I drove out to the future of grocery stores yesterday, but when I stopped for gas, I ended up on a detour to the past. There wasn't anywhere on the gas pump to stick my credit card, so I just started filling up, marveling that there was still a place where they trusted you to pay after rather than before. But then - cue the Twilight Zone music - a ghost appeared. Well, not a real ghost, but what seems like one these days: an actual human asking if he could help me. Turns out I had driven into what must be one of the last full-service stations around here.

Marion A. Backof, a retired bank supervisor and former Highlandtown and Dundalk resident, died Saturday of cancer at a Pensacola, Fla., hospice. She was 93. Marion Geiger was born and raised in Baltimore and attended city public schools. She was married in 1941 to Joseph Backof, an accountant, and together the couple owned and operated Backof's, a confectionary store at Eden Street and Fait Avenue, from 1948 to 1961. After her husband's death in 1964, she went to work as a bank teller at the Eastern Avenue branch of the old St. James Savings Bank.

Elaine C. Parker, a homemaker, sports enthusiast and bank teller, died Monday of lung cancer at the home of her son in Goldsboro on the Eastern Shore. The Greenbelt resident was 80. Born Elaine Charland in Detroit, she later moved with her family to Virginia Beach, Va., where she attended school. There, she met her husband James R. Parker Jr., a sheet metal worker. The couple married in 1949 and settled in Greenbelt, where they raised three children. After her children were grown, Mrs. Parker worked for many years at Suburban Bank in Bethesda.

When the American Idol competition was in its earliest stages, Lakisha Jones offered a tantalizing plum to four of her friends from a Millersville bank branch -- tickets to a live broadcast. For March 27 and 28. So as far back as late February, the 27-year-old former bank teller from Fort Meade with the powerhouse voice thought she could make it into the Top 10 contestants. ON TV American Idol airs at 8 tonight and 9 p.m. tomorrow on WBFF (Channel 45).

A federal jury in Baltimore convicted a former Columbia bank teller this week for her inside role in a bank robbery, prosecutors said yesterday. After a one-week trial, Jayne A. McLean, 26, of Baltimore was convicted late Thursday of bank larceny and conspiracy to commit bank larceny. According to trial testimony in U.S. District Court, McLean amassed a large amount of cash in her teller drawer at the Owen Brown shopping center branch of Chevy Chase Bank on May 16, 2001. She then staged a mock robbery by arranging to have an acquaintance demand the money from her, which totaled $27,752.

Mary K. Macrides, a former bank teller and homemaker, suffered a heart attack Friday while visiting relatives and was pronounced dead at St. Joseph Medical Center. The longtime Bel Air resident was 78. Mrs. Macrides was born Mary Kanaras in Sparta, Greece, and after completing her education began working as a bank teller for the International Agricultural Bank of Athens. She came to Baltimore in 1952, and the next year married Peter Macrides, who is a partner in the Red Fox, a popular Bel Air restaurant.

Louis A. Leitz, a retired bank teller and former Brooklyn Park resident, died of heart failure Jan. 26 at a nursing home in Colorado Springs, Colo. He was 96. Born in Baltimore and raised on Arsan Avenue, he was a graduate of city public schools. He was a bank teller for many years at the old American National Building and Loan Association until retiring in the 1970s. Mr. Leitz was a former longtime member of St. John Lutheran Church in Brooklyn Park, where he sang with the choir. He moved to Colorado Springs in 2000.

A bank teller manager from Odenton pleaded guilty in federal court in Greenbelt yesterday to embezzling more than $35,000. Theresa Williamson, 40, worked at Wachovia Bank in Laurel starting in 2002, according to court documents. Over two years, she transferred about $35,920 from a vault to her checking account, prosecutors said. The transactions generally involved between $1,000 and $2,000 each. She would create a "miscellaneous cash out ticket" for the amount she had taken to balance the bank's records, documents say. Because the bank rarely audited the vault, the crime was not discovered until an audit Sept.