Casper Woman Ordered to Repay $19,404 to Local Credit Union

In Natrona County District Court on Wednesday morning, a Casper woman was sentenced by Judge Daniel Forgey to three years of supervised probation.

Assistant District attorney Blaine Nelson said that the advantage of probation instead of an imposed prison sentence is that it gives her an opportunity to repay the credit union.

Andrea Lorraine Dees was charged with grand theft, which could've put her behind bars for 10 years.

The judge suspended a two to four year prison sentence, so if she revokes probation, she could be ordered to serve that much time locked up.

As part of her probation, she will be accountable for repaying the $19,404.10 that was overdrawn from a WyHy Credit Union bank account.

The fraud was first reported to the Casper Police on April 26th, 2021. During the investigation, police were told that Dees told the credit union's employees that she was a cryptocurrency account investor.

Court records indicate as soon as money was deposited into the account it was quickly withdrawn. Following a lengthy string of deposits, withdrawals and transfers in April, Dees' account was overdrawn by $19,409.10.

Dees claimed that she was a victim of an online scam involving bitcoin and crypto currency.

She said she was allowing a company called Trusted Crypto Minors to access her credit union account. The alleged company, she said, specialized in trading crypto-currency and needed her bank account to process the transactions. She also told police that even though the president of the crypto comapny was not a real person, she had developed real romantic feelings for them.

Emails betwen Dees and "Special Agent Dr. Rogerio Gallario" indicated that Dees was supposed to get $1,000 for each $19,000 that was funneled through her account with WyHy.

Investigators, however, learned that the email address belonging to Gallario appeared to be a "dummy" account created after Dees' WyHy account was frozen and was several thousand dollars in debt.