A former bank teller and her boyfriend have been charged with taking more than $239,000 from an Ogden bank.
Charges filed in U.S. District Court on Friday accuse Amy Leigh Engle and Bernie Frank Bringhurst of taking the cash from the vault at the Washington Mutual Bank, 2279 Washington Blvd., the afternoon of March 24. Engle had access to the vault because she was the lead vault teller at the bank.
The documents state that Engle and another teller closed the bank at 1 p.m. on that Saturday and the other teller saw Engle leave with Bringhurst. When the bank opened the following Monday, however, Engle did not come to work and other bank personnel discovered that a vault timer had been set, preventing any access to the vault until Wednesday. They also noted that all of Engle's personal items had been removed from her desk and that the video camera had stopped recording Saturday morning.
Unable to access the vault, bank officials hired a drill company to open it and found about $119,000 missing, according to the court documents. They also discovered that Engle had ordered an additional $120,000 the previous Thursday but had not told anyone. That money was also missing, the charges state.
Subsequent searches of Engle's apartment found money bags, cash straps and a large number of shredded financial documents, according to the charges. With help from Engle's parents, police eventually found Engle's Subaru at the Salt Lake International Airport, with a parking ticket stub marked at 3:34 p.m. on March 24.
Both Engle and Bringhurst remain at large.