NEW LONDON, Conn. – A 62-year-old teller at a Connecticut Community CU branch inside the Foxwoods Resort Casino confessed she stole $21,000 by replacing $100 bills with $1 bills, then gambled away the stolen money.
Yolanda O’Keefe was charged with first degree larceny and is free on $20,000 bond.
The theft was discovered after credit union officials conducted an audit and discovered $20,790 was missing from the vault and $810 was missing from O’Keefe’s teller drawer, according to court records. As senior teller, O’Keefe supervised the vault operation.
When she was confronted O’Keefe started crying and admitted that since she started working for the credit union in 1998, she started gambling at local casinos. She said she became more and more addicted to gambling as she continuously tried to win her money back. She said with her husband unemployed for the past four years, she used gambling as a means to try and make ends meet.
O’Keefe told credit union officials she planned to win enough money gambling with the intent on replacing the money she took from the vault prior to anyone discovering it was missing.
