NEW LONDON, Conn.-NCUA has filed a claim in probate court against the estate of an elderly investment broker for New London Security FCU who leaped to his death last July, just before regulators were closing in on his apparent fraud that sunk the $13 million institution.
NCUA claims Edwin Rachleff stole as much as $11.8 million from the CU.
The 82-year-old Rachleff committed suicide by jumping out of an 11-story window hours after NCUA shut the 72-year-old CU and seized its records.
NCUA claims that the local office of AG Edwards & Co., the defunct broker where Rachleff worked, had no record of the $11.8 million he had purportedly invested with the company. The missing funds bankrupted the tiny credit union, which had only 365 members, and forced the NCUA to liquidate it soon after.
The probate records show a June 2008 statement of the credit union's accounts at AG Edwards, which purported to include investments in Federal Home Loan Banks, Fannie mae and Farm Credit Banks, which apparently do not exist.
