California woman found guilty of defrauding Montana bank of over $170,000

A California woman who used fraudulent bonds to get $170,000 from a local bank was found guilty by a federal jury on Wednesday, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Kristin Edwards, 38, appeared for trial starting Tuesday in Missoula's federal courthouse before U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy.

According to court documents, Edwards made four trips from California and Montana to deposit savings bonds at four different Glacier Banks in Kalispell, Whitefish and Lakeside in late 2022 and early 2023. She deposited three fraudulent $5,000 Series EE Savings Bonds at each location for a total of over $170,000.

In early February 2023, the U.S. Treasury Department told Glacier Bank that one of Edwards' bonds was fraudulent, and all of them were likely to be proven fraudulent once investigated. Glacier Bank froze Edwards' account and called Edwards to ask about the bonds.

According to court documents, Edwards told a Glacier security officer that she had found the bonds in boxes of her deceased grandmother's things while going through them with her mother. Investigators interviewed Edwards' mother, who said that she had not found any savings bonds or heard of any savings bonds passed to Edwards.

According to a U.S. Attorney's Office release, the bonds that Edwards said her grandmother purchased had issue dates as early as 1980, six years before Edwards was born, but had Edwards' name and Social Security number printed on them. The U.S. Secret Service analyzed the bonds and found they had some common defects and weren't made with the presses used for authentic bonds.

Edwards was found guilty after a day-and-a-half trial of four counts of bank fraud. She faces a maximum sentence of 30 years of prison, a $1,000,000 fine and five years of supervised release on each count. Sentencing is set for June 23, 2026. Edwards was released with conditions pending sentencing.