MONTGOMERY, Ala. – A local businessman on Wednesday pleaded guilty to bank fraud for a scheme that kited almost $1.9 million between his accounts at Guardian CU and two banks.

ROLLA, Mo. – One member of Rolla FCU is counting her luck after she inadvertently dropped an envelope containing $500 she had just withdrawn from her account near the credit union’s Missouri University of Science and Technology branch.

BETHPAGE, N.Y. – Bethpage FCU, New York’s largest credit union, on Wednesday said in 2011 it boosted loans by 7.5% and deposits by 13%, or $450 million.

RALEIGH, N.C. – State Employees’ CU is rolling out an Income Tax Debt Repayment loan that will charge 5% interest on loans to repay unresolved balances on state income taxes.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Corporate One FCU, which announced plans in September to combine with Florida-based Southeast Corporate FCU, said this afternoon the two corporates have signed a definitive merger pact.

MADISON, Wis. – The state Senate voted yesterday to approve a bill aimed at putting abandoned properties back on the market faster , as quickly as five weeks, rather than the two months now required by law.

MADISON, Wis. – In the latest punch-up over the crash in the mortgage market, CUNA Mutual Group has filed suit against RBS Securities and asked a federal court here to order the Wall Street bank to buy back $72 million in failed residential mortgage backed securities it sold to the credit union insurer’s MEMBERS’s Life Insurance Co. and CUMIS Insurance Society units.

MANFIELD, Texas – Texas Trust CU is opening a new branch in Grand Prairie in a building formerly occupied by Wachovia, a now defunct bank.

BATON ROUGE, La. – Pelican State CU will pay its members a bonus dividend and loan rebate totaling $172,000.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – ACIPCO FCU said it will pay a member rebate for the 19th consecutive year.

MISSOULA, Mont. – Members of Montana First CU voted down a proposed merger of their $63-million credit union into Washington’s Horizon CU, a rare member rejection of a merger proposal.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Kentucky Corporate CU on Tuesday said it signed with Lending Tools to provide it with correspondent services such as ACH and international wire transfers for its credit union members.

WATERLOO, Iowa – Veridian CU has signed with NXGEN to provide it with payments processing services.

SALEM, Ore. – Maps CU said it signed with Open Solutions Inc. to convert its core processing system to the company’s DNA platform.

WARRENVILLE, Ill. – Alloya Corporate FCU, formerly Members United Corporate FCU, on Tuesday said it signed a deal with VSoft Corp to outsource the corporate’s back office item processing services to VSoft.

RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. – Shoppers who belong to credit unions spent 15% more and made 15% more transactions during the peak holiday shopping season in 2011 than in 2010, according to an analysis by CO-OP Financial Services and Saylent Technologies.

SAN DIEGO – Telesis Community CU and Citizens Development Corp., owner of the Lake San Marcos Resort & Country Club 30 miles north of here, appear to have resolved a seven-month dispute over the company’s preliminary Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Affinity Plus FCU has sold $140 million of residential first mortgage loans through a participation deal engineered by Mortgage Liquidity Solutions, a start-up Denver CUSO Affinity Plus partially owns.

BURTON, Mich. – Five more credit unions have agreed to settle pending civil suits alleging they violated the Electronic Funds Transfer Act’s fee disclosure provisions, but at least one of the settlements is raising questions about the more than three dozen suits filed against credit unions and banks by a Michigan retiree and her boyfriend.

LOS ANGELES – NCUA urged a federal judge here last week not to dismiss its claims against underwriters of more than $1 billion of mortgage-backed securities sold to WesCorp FCU, as the regulator’s numerous legal claims in the corporate credit union failures appear to be slipping away.