ALEXANDRIA, Va. NCUA yesterday banned Theresa Portillo, who was CEO and sole employee at Women’s Southwest FCU, a tiny feminist credit union shuttered by NCUA in October, for her January conviction of stealing $3.4 million from the credit union over 11 years.
Portillo, 34, confessed to converting 18 credit union-owned CDs and using the proceeds to buy cars, jewelry, vacations, pay medical bills and buy nine Dallas-area homes.
The credit union, chartered in 1974 as Feminist Southwest FCU and expanded to serve area feminist organizations, had just 743 members and $2.3 million in assets when it was liquidated in October. Its remnants assigned to City Credit Union of Dallas in a purchase and assumption deal.
NCUA also banned Cindy Dechant, a former president of tiny Associated Blind of Oklahoma and Texas FCU in Oklahoma City, for stealing $195,000 through a loan scheme.
Dechant, who was convicted of loan fraud and sentenced to 42 months in prison, applied for and received a series of loans in her own name and in the names of others and inflated the value of the loans to others, keeping the proceeds or inflated amounts for her personal use. She then manipulated the credit union’s books to hide the scheme.
