Five WBCECU Members Charged With Fraud

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — Five members of Wilkes-Barre City Employees FCU, including one employee, were charged Thursday with conspiracy and bank fraud related to an elaborate scheme to obtain loans with false collateral and stolen identities.

Indictments were returned from a grand jury in Scranton following the corruption investigation of the CU by the FBI and the Pennsylvania State Police, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

Jim Payne, former head of Wilkes-Barre City Employees FCU, committed suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on March 10, one day before his scheduled testimony in front of a federal grand jury regarding the probe.

According to U.S. Attorney Peter Smith, Tino Ninotti, 35; Jason Anthony, 34; Leo Glodzik, 43; Amanda Magda, 30 and Jeffrey Serafin, age 35, were charged in three separate indictments related to activities of the credit union, according to published reports.

Glodzik is also charged with tampering with a witness.

Magda was the assistant manager at the CU. Anthony is a Wilkes-Barre city police officer, while Ninotti is a former Wilkes-Barre city police officer. Glodzik is a contractor whose company had a towing contract with the city of Wilkes-Barre.

Four of the defendants appeared Thursday before Magistrate Judge Karoline Mehalchick in federal court in Wilkes-Barre. Ninotti, Anthony and Glodzik were released from custody and ordered to report to pretrial services. Glodzik was ordered to surrender his passport. Serafin was released on his own recognizance. A hearing for Magda was expected to take place Thursday.

The indictments allege that the defendants, earlier this year, individually or by aiding and abetting one another, secured loans from the CU by means of false and fraudulent pretenses, including the use of false collateral, the stolen identities of others who were not aware of loans in their names, and forgery. Magda and Anthony are charged in one indictment; Ninotti, Glodzik and Magda in a second indictment; and Serafin alone in the third indictment.

If convicted, the defendants each face up to 30 years in prison and fines in the amount of $1 million.

Sean Quinn, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Scranton, Pa., office previously attributed Payne's death to "a byproduct of corruption." He did not say if Payne, 50, had been a target of the probe.