CLEVELAND The FBI launched a nationwide search for Alex Spirikaitis, CEO of Taupa Lithuanian CU, in connection with a fraud that sunk the $24-million credit union earlier this week.
“We have a lot to do, this is on the top of the list,” Vicki Anderson, special agent for the FBI, told Credit Union Journal yesterday.
The hunt for the CEO fugitive began Wednesday afternoon, after authorities realized after a 17-hour stand-off outside the suspect’s home that he was not inside. The FBI’s Anderson said local police had gone to the home Tuesday evening around 8 p.m. and allowed Spirikaitis’ family to leave while they asked him to come out. Circumstances at the home led police in the Cleveland suburb of Solon to believe the suspect was still inside, she said.
Solon Police had arrived to serve a warrant on the credit union executive regarding allegations of embezzlement. Additional charges of unwarranted flight to avoid prosecution are possible, said Anderson. The Ohio Department of Commerce, the state’s banking regulator, seized Taupa Lithuanian on Monday and assigned NCUA as liquidating agent for the year’s 12th credit union failure.
NCUA said the credit union served 1,100 members of the Lithuanian community in Cleveland and elsewhere in northern Ohio.
