Two former New York-based bank employees have been sentenced to federal prison for their roles in separate schemes that moved millions of dollars in illicit funds through their employers’ branches, federal prosecutors announced.
Wilfredo Aquino, 47, of Manhattan, was sentenced today to 46 months in prison. Court documents show Aquino leveraged his position as an assistant store manager at TD Bank to help a massive money laundering network move funds between 2019 and February 2021.
The network’s leader, Da Ying Sze, who also went by the name David, coordinated the movement of approximately $474 million through TD Bank accounts by depositing cash at branches in New York, New Jersey, and other locations. Sze pleaded guilty in February 2022 to coordinating a $653 million money laundering conspiracy.
During the scheme, Aquino personally processed about 1,680 official bank checks for Sze and his associates, totaling more than $92 million. Almost all of these checks were funded by cash deposits over $10,000, which legally required TD Bank to file a currency transaction report. Prosecutors said Aquino knew Sze was making these deposits but deliberately left his name off the reports as the “conductor” to hide his role.
Aquino pushed the transactions through even though he knew the bank had shut down other accounts linked to Sze for suspicious activity. At one point, a colleague explicitly warned Aquino that Sze’s activity looked like money laundering. In return for his help, Aquino accepted over $11,000 in retail gift cards from Sze. Aquino pleaded guilty in January 2026 to conspiring to launder monetary instruments.
In a separate case, Edward Low, 31, of Flushing, New York, was sentenced yesterday to 24 months in prison. Low pleaded guilty in February 2026 to conspiring to commit wire fraud and making false bank entries as a bank employee.
According to court records, Low accepted $26,700 in bribes between January and May 2021 while working as a retail employee at TD Bank. In exchange, he stole confidential customer information and passed it to outside co-conspirators, who used the data to take over accounts and steal funds. Low also processed some of the fraudulent transactions himself, helping facilitate $484,572 in fraud.
After leaving TD Bank, Low took a job at another financial institution. Between May and August 2022, he accepted another bribe to falsify bank records and open an account for a shell company. His co-conspirators then used that account to run another $47,195 fraud scheme.
The sentences were announced by Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer for the District of New Jersey, IRS-CI Special Agent in Charge Jenifer L. Piovesan, and FDIC OIG Special Agent in Charge Patricia Tarasca.
The cases were investigated by the IRS-CI Newark Field Office and the FDIC OIG New York Region, with assistance from the Morristown Police Department.
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