Former Financial Advisor Agrees to Plead Guilty to Aggravated Identity Theft

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Tyler Rigsbee, 32, of Folsom, has signed a plea agreement admitting to committing aggravated identity theft, U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert announced.

Rigsbee was charged in a criminal information filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court. In a plea agreement, filed today, Rigsbee agreed to plead guilty to one count of aggravated identity theft. Rigsbee is scheduled for an initial appearance on Oct. 5, 2022, before Magistrate Judge Kendall J. Newman.

According to court documents, from 2016 to 2021, Rigsbee worked as a financial advisor at a major bank in Sacramento. During his employment, Rigsbee stole over $158,000 from the accounts of two bank customers. Rigsbee stole this money by transferring it from customer accounts to brokerage accounts he created at E-Trade, a third-party financial institution. He then transferred the money from these brokerage accounts to his own personal bank account. Rigsbee also attempted to conceal his scheme by partially replacing some of what he stole from one of these bank customers with money he took from the account of a third bank customer.

After the death of one bank customer in August 2018, Rigsbee created a fraudulent request for distribution of eligible assets from a transfer-on-death account by falsely pretending that he was the deceased customer’s beneficiary. On March 15, 2019, Rigsbee submitted this request for distribution of eligible assets to the bank’s estate processing department, which caused the liquidation of the customer’s account and transfer of these funds to a brokerage account Rigsbee created and controlled.

This case is the product of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Elliot C. Wong is prosecuting the case.

Rigsbee faces a mandatory term of two years in prison and a statutory maximum fine of up to $250,000 fine or twice the gross gain or gross loss. The actual sentence, however, will be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables.