NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. – A former risk management analyst at South Carolina FCU was sentenced to 30 months in prison Friday for a fraud scheme that drained as much as $330,000 from accounts that belonged to a dead woman, deployed military personnel and others.
Robert Tam, 43, a 23-year veteran of the credit union, planned the fraud with a colleague, James Kizer, who in November was sentenced to 16 months in prison.
The two employees found accounts with little or no activity, then issued credit/debit cards in the names of those members, according to prosecutors. Kizer used those cards to withdraw cash from ATMs not equipped with security cameras, and split the money with Tam.
The fraud was carried on from 2005 until the fall of 2009, when the two workers were fired from their jobs at the credit union’s Summerville branch.
One member had died in 1999 and, unknown to her family, continued receiving monthly pension checks from the federal government for $1,600. Tam and Kizer embezzled more than $130,000 from that account through 545 ATM withdrawals, prosecutors said.
As part of his work with the anti-fraud department, Tam credited accounts for losses.
