The former manager of Unified Singers FCU and three family members were charged in a federal indictment with an embezzlement scheme that forced the failure of the well-known community development credit union in April 2002.
Jean Pogue, who ran Unified Singers FCU for 15 years, her husband, Joseph Pogue, their daughter Cassandra Montgomery, and her husband, Everett Montgomery, were charged with stealing as much as $1.2 million by opening fictitious accounts and creating loans for the accounts, then transferring the money to their own accounts for personal use over a nine-year period. The four are also charged with using a credit union credit card for personal purchases and writing checks on credit union accounts to buy private vehicles. The indictment charges the four conspired to create loans for a local church and a funeral home that were members of the credit union, without the consent of the church or the funeral home, then used the loan proceeds for their own use.
The CDCU, which had fewer than $1.5 million in assets when it was shut down by NCUA in April 2002, was often held up as an example of the good works of low-income credit unions and was cited by the Brookings Institute in a 2001 study for its performance in serving low-income communities.
