PHOENIX – The former chief of member business lending at Yuma’s troubled AEA FCU was sentenced this afternoon to 15 years in prison for approving more than $60 million in fraudulent loans in exchange for more than $1 million in kickbacks and bribes.
William Liddle , 52, was convicted on 54 criminal counts in February in connection with the MBL scheme, which cost an estimated $38 million in losses and pushed the one-time $410 million credit union to the brink. He was immediately remanded into custody.
Liddle’s sentencing was postponed two weeks after the one-time credit union executive was found stabbed in the backyard of his Phoenix home, though authorities were unable to locate an assailant. Authorities said Liddle claimed he had was hit in the head by an unseen assailant and when he came to, less than an hour before his scheduled sentencing there was a knife in his chest.
AEA, the one-time credit union for the Arizona Education Association, has been run under NCUA conservatorship since December 2010 and remains operating only because of a $20 million emergency loan from NCUA.
