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Link: $1.2 Million Stolen From Kiri Te Kanawa
Alameda police: Bank manager embezzles more than $650,0000 from opera star
By Peter Hegarty
Staff Writer
InsideBayArea.com
ALAMEDA — A bank manager has been arrested on suspicion of embezzling more than $650,000 [NZD - $1.2 Million] from Kiri Te Kanawa, the international opera singer whose Grammy Award-wining career spans more than four decades and includes a performance at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.
Police arrested Sokvoeun "Cindy" Sou, 27, Tuesday at Bank of Alameda on Island Drive, where she worked as a manager and where Te Kanawa has an Individual Retirement Account.
A Dame of the British Empire, Te Kanawa lives in England. Her Bay Area connections, which include friends and past performances at the San Francisco Opera, apparently led her to open the account here.
Investigators at the bank became suspicious of Sou after a financial adviser for the opera singer noticed five unauthorized withdrawals from the retirement account between last May and earlier this month, Alameda police Detective Greg Ella said.
Each withdrawal was in the form of a cashier's check, including one for $200,000, and the checks were made out to Sou's family members, Ella said.
A San Leandro resident, Sou deposited the checks into her family's various accounts at a U.S. Bank branch in Alameda — where Sou also once worked — and then transferred money into her own account, according to investigators.
The total loss was about $651,715.
"She confessed to what she had done and she stated that she had acted alone," Ella said. "She said she was having financial troubles. She had purchased a house in San Leandro, she had a child and she owed some family members money."
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