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WOMAN CAUGHT FOR STEALING PAYDAY LOANS
January 5th, 2012
Woman who headed Dwelling House scandal gets 12 1/2 years
This 44 year old woman, Elexa Manos-Becton, has spent her adult life stealing and getting token punishments. Today, finally, the woman who found an accounting glitch and terminally undermined Dwelling House Savings & Loan was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison for bank fraud and money laundering, and ordered to do what she can to pay back the $2.47 million she and friends siphoned from the venerable Hill District institution.
What she discovered
The Coraopolis woman accidentally discovered that if she took out payday loans and instructed the lenders to take repayment from a Dwelling House account that did not have sufficient funds, she was never charged for the withdrawal. So she settled down and repeated the exercise about 200 times. She also shared the discovery with at least two friends who she met in jail, plus her son, all of whom have pleaded guilty.
Apologies
“I’d like to publicly apologize to the Lavelles, the Hill District family that owned Dwelling House, the employees and the customers,” Ms. Manos-Becton said. “It was not my intention to put the bank out of business. ”
Sentence
Her attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Jay J. Finkelstein, said she should get a 92-month sentence in light of her psychiatric disorders, drug and alcohol problems, troubled childhood and occasional attempts to cooperate with prosecutors. Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Hull, though, pointed out that Ms. Manos-Becton has 29 convictions in her past, including 20 for thefts and others for drug, gun and prostitution crimes. During the years when she was bleeding Dwelling House, she spent the money on drugs and “exorbitant living,” he said. U.S. District Judge Alan N. Bloch said her life was “an endless pattern of criminal behavior.
Culmination of a lifetime
“The defendant has received only slaps on the wrist,” Judge Bloch said, so she “kept rolling the dice. This crime seems to be the culmination of a lifetime spent stealing.” Ms. Manos-Becton’s bond was revoked and she was immediately taken into custody byU.S.marshals. Her son, Dimitri Manos, and friend Veronica Smith are scheduled to be sentenced Thursday, closing out the prosecutions of the four people indicted in Dwelling House’s demise.
The Hazards of Being a Paypal Loan Clerk
June 21st, 2011
Man apologizes for shooting Hanover Park payday loan clerk
Last October Jaime Brock was shot in the forehead at point-blank range by a robber at USA Pay Day Loans in Hanover Park. In court Monday, Brock addressed the shooter, saying: “I don’t know the reason why you did what you did. I have a daughter who just had her eighth-grade graduation … I have a 4-year-old son with cerebral palsy. I was the breadwinner in my family. You don’t know at all what you could have caused me that day if I had died.”
The result
After being shot Jaime lay bleeding and motionless on the floor until she heard the gunman leave. “I started screaming at myself, ‘Get up! Get up!’” the 35-year-old mother of three from Hoffman Estates remembers thinking. She managed to get up and call 911, possibly saving her own life in the process, and then texted the employees at the neighboring Jimmy John’s restaurant and called home to tell her family she’d been shot. She remained conscious long enough to tell police and paramedics she knew the gunman, a regular customer named Admise Wilson. Brock made a miraculous recovery but still has bullet fragments in her brain and must regularly see a neurosurgeon. She has not yet been able to return to work.
Attempted murder
Wilson, 34, of Hanover Park, was arrested and charged with several crimes, including attempted first-degree murder. Brock stood in court Monday to witness Cook County circuit court Judge Thomas Fecarotta sentence Wilson to 25 years in jail under a plea agreement that Brock approved. Wilson tearfully apologized to Brock, her husband and her children. “I didn’t mean for it to happen that way. I’m sorry for the pain I caused to you and your family,” said Wilson, bowing his head repeatedly as he fought back tears. “I’m glad you’re up and moving around. … I’m going to be gone for a long time.”
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