INDIANAPOLIS – The former head teller at now-defunct Obelisk FCU on Friday pleaded guilty to stuffing her pockets with wads of $100 bills for four years – stealing a total of $7 million – to feed her gambling habit, pushing the 37-year-old credit union into bankruptcy.
Patricia Sherman was sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison and ordered to repay the stolen funds, but that is unlikely because she gambled them all away on Ohio River casino boats. She stole $7 million over 46 months, a total of about $150,000 every month, or about $37,000 every week, she told prosecutors.
A bond company paid $2 million of the loss, but about $5 million had to be written off as an expense. The theft bankrupted the $50 million New Albany-based credit union, forcing it to merge with Centra CU in Columbus, Ind., last July.
“This is a theft, a case of grand theft, on an astonishing scale,” said federal Judge David Hamilton at Friday’s sentencing, “driving what had been a healthy credit union into insolvency.”
The theft was discovered in March 2007 when another employee confronted Sherman about a discrepancy between the ledger and the vault's cash balance, according to court records.
Prosecutors said they were able to track $1 million of the funds to losses at the casinos, but have not been able to locate the rest. Sherman reported on her 2006 taxes that she lost $3.5 million gambling that year.
Obelisk was chartered in 1970 to serve employees of the Pillsbury bakery company.
