CHARLESTON, W.VA. — A former executive at N&W Poca Division FCU and her cousin were charged by a federal grand jury yesterday with embezzling $2.4 million for the one-time $7 million credit union in nearby Bluefield that went under in 2008.
The grand jury alleged that Rebecca Poe, the 35-year-old assistant manager and daughter of the president Deborah Bailey, and her cousin Pamela Mullins, a 46-year-old teller at the defunct credit union, engaged in a variety of schemes authorities say may have drained as much as $5 million from the 40-year-old credit union.
The charges follow a civil suit filed by NCUA last year claiming the manager, Deborah Bailey and her husband and their daughter and niece and their husbands looted the credit union that was chartered to serve employees of the Norfolk and Western Railway and later added employees of American Electric Power Co. (formerly Appalachian Power Co.)–N&W Poca.
The alleged family fraud wiped out the vast majority of the $7 million credit union’s assets and caused a loss of $5.5 million for the first three quarters of 2008, when it was shut down by NCUA.
In its civil suit NCUA claims the group made fictitious deposits into theirs and family members’ accounts and made phony payments on loans they took out. The fictitious deposits scheme began small and grew steadily, according to NCUA, to as much as $14,000 a month in 2002. The suit also claims the credit union made hundreds of thousands of dollars in debits on behalf of the family members which were never posted to their accounts.
NCUA’s suit names as participants in the scheme: Deborah bailey and her husband Kenneth Bailey; their daughter Poe and her husband Joey Poe; their cousin Mullins and her son Christopher Mullins, who was a member of the credit union’s supervisory committee.
