Thousands Of Katrina Victims Overdrew CUAccounts

NEW ORLEANS - (02/24/06) – ASI FCU said it is stillworking to collect funds from thousands of its members who overdrewtheir accounts in the days after Hurricane Katrina hit when itprovided offline access to ATMs. As many as half of the 10,000members of the low-income credit union who overdrew their accountshave made amends, according to Audrey Cerise, president of the $250million CDCU. Many of the overdrawn accounts will probably never berepaid, she conceded. “Five thousand took money from us anddidn’t give it back, but you know, 75,000 didn’t. Andwe know there are a lot of people out there who are very willing topay us back, but they can’t feed their families, much lesspay us,” Cerise told The Credit Union Journal.“We’re going to take a big hit, we just haven’ttaken it yet.” Because of the emergency, ASI continued to letits members withdraw money from their accounts at various ATMs inthe days and weeks following the massive disaster, even thoughthere was no way to balance any of those transactions for daysbecause the data processing system was down.