CEO Gets Three Years in Prison for $2 Million Embezzlement

ALLENTOWN, Pa. – The former CEO of Northampton-Carbon County was sentenced yesterday to 37 months behind bars for embezzling an estimated $2 million from the failed credit union, in one of the biggest credit union corruption cases in several years. Michael Symons, 67, also agreed to pay $100,000 of a $1.8 million restitution order within 60 days, before he reports to prison. Symons’ wife, Lucinda Sterling, who was vice president of the credit union and manager of one of its branch, is scheduled for trial in July on charges she participated in the scheme. The sentencing follows last year’s imprisonment of self-professed ‘shopaholic’ Betty Jean Barachie, another former Nor-Car branch manager who pleaded guilty to stealing $1.5 million, much of which she used to finance her compulsive shopping. She told authorities she used the funds to buy hundreds of pairs of shoes, some 3,000 books, 58 coats, 16 chainsaws and a John Deere Tractor. Most of the items she bought sat piled in her house unused with the price tags still on them. NCUA took over Nor-Car FCU in 2003, then sold its assets to nearby First Commonwealth FCU.