A former American Savings Bank employee who is accused of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a 92-year-old customer has pleaded not guilty.

Marilyn De Motta appeared in U.S. District Court on Thursday with her attorney William Harrison for her arraignment before U.S. Magistrate Leslie Kobayashi.

De Motta, who was a supervisor at American Savings' Hawai'i Kai branch, was indicted by a federal grand jury on Nov. 15 on theft, embezzlement and bank fraud charges.

The 10-count indictment also alleged that De Motta stole money from the federal government by diverting more than $91,000 in cashier's checks that customer Ada Lim had intended to pay her taxes with.

If convicted, De Motta faces up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine for each bank fraud and embezzlement charge, and up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each theft of public funds charge.

TRIAL IS SCHEDULED TO BEGIN ON FEB. 26

De Motta's arraignment initially was scheduled for Dec. 27 but rescheduled for yesterday. However, Kobayashi held the hearing Thursday at the request of Harrison, De Motta's attorney, according to a court representative.

Harrison said yesterday that De Motta plans to challenge the case. She previously said that Lim loaned her the money.

The criminal case comes after American Savings paid more than $1 million to settle lawsuits by Lim and the bank's former security director Bert Corniel, who filed separate lawsuits alleging that De Motta took money from Lim and that bank officials tried to cover up the matter.

American Savings had no comment. In the past, the bank denied that it tried to conceal fraud and said it fired De Motta shortly after the allegations came up. The bank said it is cooperating with the federal investigation, which is ongoing.

Reach Rick Daysog at rdaysog@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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