Texas bank worker stole nude photos from women’s phones while assisting them, cops say
A former Bank of America employee in Texas is facing charges after police say he stole nude photos from female customers’ phones, court documents show.
Juan Esteban Ramirez, 27, is charged with two counts of unlawful disclosure of intimate visual material, the latest filed on Monday.
Police said Ramirez used his role as a relationship manager at a Houston Bank of America to encourage at least two women he assisted in September to hand over their phones so he could steal nude photos and video.
Bank of America said he was fired in October after the company was made aware of the allegations, KPRC reported. The bank added that it has cooperated fully with the investigation.
On Sept. 12, a woman went into the bank for help setting up an account and handed Ramirez her unlocked phone, police said. He’s accused of keeping the phone “for an extended period of time.”
Two days later, the woman started receiving nude photos and video of herself from a phone number she didn’t recognize along with text messages threatening to send the images to her parents, according to police. She changed her phone number after receiving 28 messages.
Investigators traced the messages to Ramirez, who they learned had been charged in January for a similar incident involving another bank customer.
In that incident, a customer had gone into the bank on Sept. 14 to get a new debit card. Ramirez took her to a desk and asked her to pull up her account information on her phone, police said.
The customer wasn’t sure how to locate her information, so she unlocked her phone and handed it to Ramirez. Police said Ramirez kept her phone for roughly 10 minutes before returning it and telling the woman she’d receive a temporary debit card in the mail.
Later, the woman noticed text message delivery notifications on her Apple watch to a phone number she didn’t recognize, police said. She checked her phone, but it showed no sent messages.
According to her Apple watch, the messages were sent while the woman was at the bank and included more than a dozen photos of her, some of them nude, according to police.
Investigators traced the number to Ramirez and analyzed surveillance video during the time the woman was in the bank, police said.
He was arrested in connection with that incident in January and charged with unlawful disclosure of intimate visual material, court records show. He received the same charge on Monday for the Sept. 12 incident.
Ramirez is due back in court on April 19.
