The former assistant manager at an East Los Angeles Bank of America branch certainly had nerve. According to the story in the Los Angeles Times, first she pretended to be a victim of armed assailants as she helped to rob the bank where she worked. Then, still playing the victim, she asked the bank to pay for her robbery-induced post-traumatic stress disorder. It was all a sham, according to investigators.
Aurora Barrera, 33, had just been sentenced to nine years in federal prison for her role in the dramatic 2012 robbery when she was arrested last week on the additional charge of filing a fraudulent workers’ compensation claim. Reyes “Ray” Vega, 35, of Bell was also convicted in March of conspiracy to commit bank robbery and bank robbery, with a special allegation of assault by use of a dangerous weapon.
It all started on Sept. 5, 2012, when Barrera walked into her own bank branch wearing what she said was a bomb and persuaded her colleagues to empty the vault and leave the cash outside for her assailants. She claimed they had kidnapped her and held her at gunpoint before strapping explosives to her at her Huntington Park home.
Barrera filed the PTSD claim two days later, and the bank’s insurance company soon began paying out. The company paid her more than $35,000 in disability benefits and covered more than $9,000 in medical bills associated with the alleged workplace injury, according to California Department of Insurance spokeswoman Nancy Kincaid.
But the bomb was later discovered to be a fake – a flashlight wrapped in black electrical tape – and so was the rest of the story, investigators determined. Barrera was an accomplice, not a victim, and at her sentencing last Wednesday she was ordered to turn herself in to authorities in early September. Evidence presented during the four-day trial in Los Angeles federal court showed Vega masterminded the robbery, which netted about $565,000. One of the cooperating witnesses, Richard Menchaca, testified that in a meeting with Vega hours after the heist, it was agreed that Barrera would get $100,000 “because she took the most risks.” The fake bomb was so convincing that after Barrera took the money from the safe a Los Angeles County sheriff’s bomb robot was used to pry the device off the woman.
Barrera’s co-worker at the bank that day saw part of the license plate of the car that took the money away, according to prosecutors. Investigators identified the vehicle as belonging to the father of her then-boyfriend, Vega, and tracked his movements that day to a Day’s Inn. Security video shows the car and Vega meeting with two other men involved in the heist. Subsequent phone records and text messages tied the ring together, according to Asst. U.S. Atty. Justin Rhoades.
On Thursday morning, police knocked on the door of her Downey home to settle one more account, Workers’ Compensation fraud.
“It’s shocking to think that Barrera, a trusted financial institution manager, would be a co-conspirator in a bank robbery and staged kidnapping, and then have the audacity to file a bogus workers’ comp claim for traumatic stress and believe she could get away with it,” Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said.
Only a fraction of the $565,500 stolen from the bank has been recovered. So in addition to their prison sentences, Barrera and her co-conspirators, including a former boyfriend, have been ordered to pay $557,300 in restitution. “Where’s the money?” U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real loudly asked Barrera, at the time of her sentencing who stood silently before him and declined to address the court. About $8,000 of the stolen cash has been recovered, Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin Rhoades said.
The prosecutor said Barrera used her knowledge of the bank’s operations “to rob her own company of half-a-million dollars” and obstructed justice by causing law enforcement to “go looking for two black men” instead of the real culprits.Barrera, who could not be reached for comment, faces up to another five years behind bars on the insurance fraud charge.