MIDLAND, Texas - A 33-year-old teller at Complex Community FCU who staged a phony bomb scare to steal $9,200 told a federal judge she did not "feel like a criminal" just before he sent her away to prison.

MADISON, Wis. - The company credit union land knows as "CUNA Mutual Group" is more than just an insurance company. In fact, that's not even the company's real name. Here's a primer on this complex organization.

I wish you had known him.

Boiled peanuts, sweet tea, NASCAR, and pickup trucks-you know you're in the South. On a crisp October day I took a three-hour drive from Atlanta through the rolling hills of western Alabama to Limestone Springs Golf Club to attend America's First FCU's Annual Charity Golf Tournament.

Another debit provider offering "big incentives" has just approached my credit union! What should I do?

CALABASAS, Calif. – Angelo Mozilo, founder and head of Countrywide Financial, is having a year most corporate CEO’s would be envious of, even it he is expected to earn $60 million less than he did last year. Mozilo is expected to earn about $100 million this year, which will include almost $75 million in profits from the exercise of 2.2 million stock options, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Almost two million of those options were exercised at just $5.80 a share, while the shares were then sold for an average of $40 each. Still, those numbers are down from last year, when the Countrywide Exec earned $120 million on the exercise of more than four million options, bringing his total compensation, including salary and bonus and extras, to $150 million.

DENVER – Just weeks after becoming a public company again, Western Union has become the target of a so-called mini tender offer from Canadian investment company TRC Capital Corp. The world’s leading remittance company said the $22.50 a share offer for up to five million shares does not offer enough of a premium. TRC has made similar mini-tenders for drug-maker Wyeth, oil giant Chevron and JDS Uniphase, the maker of optical network equipment. In a mini tender offer and investor makes a bid for less than 5% of a company’s stock, meaning it does not have to disclose the offer to the public through a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Instead of a premium, TRC Capital often bids for shares at a discount in these tenders. Unlike other tender offers, the seller can't back out after acceptance. The offer comes a little over a month after Western Union was spun off from First Data Corp., returning to the public markets for the first time in a decade.

CASPER, Wyo. – Reliant FCU said it plans to break ground on a $2.3 million headquartersproject next spring. The new building will provide up to 12,000 square feet of space, at leasttwo stories tall, with an ATM and drive-through lanes. The general contractor will be NewGround, a Springfield, Mo., company that specializes in financial institution structures. Completion of the project is slated for the spring of 2008.

JACKSONVILLE, Ark.–Arkansas FCU has come to the rescue of Santa--or at least his missing suit. The credit union is donating funds to replace Saline County's Santa suit, which was reported missing earlier when county officials sought to retrieve it from a local dry cleaner. AFCU has presented a check for $500 to Saline County Judge Lanny Fite at the Saline County Courthouse’s North Pole Gazebo.

WASHINGTON – Fannie Mae said last week it was awarded a patent for a system to trade greenhouse gas-reduction credits earned by homeowners, securing a foothold in a $22 billion market, while raising concerns that the government-chartered company is overstepping its mission. Granting of the new patent comes just weeks after the secondary mortgage market giant raised major controversy with a patent covering computer software that matches borrowers with the best mortgage. Former Chief Executive Franklin Raines is listed in the patent as an inventor of a system for verifying cuts in household emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The patent, held jointly with a subsidiary of New York-based Cantor Fitzgerald LP, gives Fannie Mae proprietary control over a method for pooling and selling credits to companies that can't meet emission reduction targets.

WASHINGTON – The Senate will make perceived abuses in the credit card market, including rising and hidden fees, one of its first courses of business when it reconvenes next year. Democratic Sen Carl Levin, who will become chairman of the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations next month, said he plans to hold hearings next year on credit card issuer ‘abuses’ and introduce legislation to correct them. Levin excoriated credit card issuers during a policy forum last week for charging fee piled upon fee piled upon penalty, which hinder good-faith efforts to pay off debt. Not surprisingly, the increased use of credit cards has helped put many families in debt. Due to the 2005 bankruptcy bill that the credit card companies fought so hard for last year, that debt is now even harder to discharge, said Levin, at a forum sponsored by the Center for American Progress. The center wants the Federal Trade Commission to develop an incentive-based credit card safety disclosure system, much like that for vehicle safety, and assign ratings that are printed on the card itself.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – WesCorp FCU’s proposed acquisition of Volunteer Corporate CU, delayed because of questions of state procedure, appears to be back on track with both corporates eyeing a wedding date for the first quarter of 2007. The proposed combination of the two corporates hit a roadblock in March when the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions requested that VolCorp pay out more to members from reserves and undivided earnings than NCUA said it would allow. California-based WesCorp had proposed a $4 million payout to VolCorp members. To resolve the issue, WesCorp has agreed to pay out all of VolCorp’s $26 million in retained earnings to its members as Paid in Capital over a 20-year period. “What’s unique is that the payment of dividends will come from the savings of the merger,” Rick Veach, CEO of VolCorp, told The Credit Union Journal last week. The payouts are based on the length of membership and the amount of shares owned by each of VolCorp’s 230 credit union members. WesCorp has more than $27 billion in assets and VolCorp has more than $1 billion.

DES MOINES, Iowa – Five Midwestern credit unions were awarded $400,000 in grants Friday from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines, which they may offer as downpayment assistance to first-time homebuyers. Among the winners were: Alcoa Employees & Community CU ($100,000); Dupaco Community CU ($100,000); University of Iowa CU ($75,000); Community Choice CU ($75,000) and Linn Area CU ($50,000). The Des Moines Bank awarded more than $8 million in housing grants under its Urban First-Time Homebuyer Fund, Rural Homeownership Fund, Urban Homeownership Fund and Native American Homeownership Fund. Credit unions receiving the funds can offer it to eligible low-income borrowers to provide down payment, closing cost or rehabilitation assistance.

ATLANTA – The Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta announced Friday it has named Thomas Webber, chief financial officer for Washington, D.C.-based IDB-IIC FCU to its board, becoming the only credit union executive on a board of the 12 FHLBs. The appointment comes as credit unions have been lobbying for some representation on the FHLBs, which now count almost 1,000 credit unions among their members. Credit unions have had only one representative on the FHLB boards in recent years, but not at present. Webber has more than 35 years of financial service experience and has been CFO at the $300 million credit union since 1999. The Atlanta FHLB has the most members, 1,200 banks, thrifts and credit unions, about 135 of them credit unions.

WASHINGTON – Yet another government study released Friday indicates that credit unions’membership is becoming less focused on people of modest means and more focused on higher income individuals. The new study was released by congressional think tank the General Accountability Office just two weeks after NCUA released its own study purporting to show that credit union service is focused mainly on the lower- and middle-class. It is sure to raise the level of debate in Congress on whether credit unions should have some kind of Community Reinvestment Act-like requirement. That is because the GAO study was based on more recent data, from 2004, than NCUA’s, which only measured up to 2000--before the massive shift to community charters among credit union took affect. Even more troubling, the GAO study shows a greater portion of the consumers served by banks, than by credit unions, are considered of low- or moderate-income. The GAO found that the portion of credit union members considered low income declined from 16.4% to 14.5% between 2000 and 2004; and the portion considered moderate income fell from19.3% to 16.6%. During the same period, when the number of community chartered credit unions doubled to more than 1,000, the portion of credit union members considered upper income rose from 42.6% to 48.8%. The make-up of the banks’ consumers remained about the same during this period. The data appears to support the banks’ criticisms that the continuing expansion of credit unions has coincided with a shift form their original focus of serving people of modest means.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Credit union representatives met again this week with the bankers to negotiate a bill that would settle their long legal battle over field of membership, but were unable to come to an agreement, despite being urged to do so by state legislative leaders. “We’re closer, I think, then when we started, but we’re still far apart,” Max Cook, president of the Missouri Bankers Association, told The Credit Union Journal, of the fifth meeting between the sides. A carefully arranged agreement that was enacted into law eight years ago has blown up since then with state chartered credit unions obtaining ever larger FOMs, rivaling some of the broadest in the country. The bankers have challenged at least 10 of the FOM grants in court as violating the 1998 law and the courts have agreed. Leaders of the state Senate have directed the two sides to develop a compromise bill which would settle their legal battles. Cook said the bankers want to archive two major things in any bill. One would be consistent limitations that do not use postal zip codes or telephone area codes as Missouri credit unions are doing, but on generally accepted geographic delineations like county or town. The other would be some kind of Community Reinvestment Act-type requirement for credit unions awarded large community FOMs. The bankers have the upper hand in the negotiations because a state appeals court recently struck down the CU Division’s application of the law, rendering FOMs awarded to as many as a dozen of the largest state chartered credit unions illegal.

FOREST HILL, N.Y.. – A local community group is trying to organize a credit union for the low-income and immigrant neighborhoods of Jackson Heights, Corona and Elmhurst. Forest hills Community House, which is spearheading the effort, estimates as much as half the population is foreign born in the targeted field of membership. The group is working to organize community representatives and to partner with an existing credit union to get off the ground. Plans are in the initial stages and organizers say they have yet to submit a charter application to NCUA.

WASHINGTON – The leadership of the House Financial Services Committee is beginning to take shape, with Pennsylvania Congressman Paul Kanjorski expected to chair the panel’s subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises, and not the subcommittee on Financial Institutions, which will debate his CU Regulatory Improvements Act, or CURIA. Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank told The Credit Union Journal yesterday that Kanjorski, the ranking Democrat on Capital Markets, has decided to chair the panel, and California Congresswoman Maxine Waters has decided to chair the subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity. The chairmen of the other three subcommittees of Financial Services have not been decided yet, as committee members are considering their options before January’s onset of the 100th Congress, Frank said. Committee assignments and chairmen will not be decided formally until lawmakers return after the new year.

WASHINGTON – Passage of a tough new anti-predatory mortgage bill is expected to be one of the first items of business for the House Financial Institutions Committee in the next Congress. “Getting a good predatory loan bill will be a top priority,” Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, expected to be the next chairman of the committee, told the Consumer Federation of America yesterday. The bill is being drafted by North Carolina Congressman Brad Miller and is being modeled after that state’s predatory loan law that was drafted, in part, by Self Help CU’s Center for Responsive Lending, and State Employees CU. That law bars a number of practices considered predatory, like ‘flipping,’ upfront payment of single premium insurance, and sets limits on a variety of fees typically charged for subprime mortgages. Frank said two other top priorities will be passage of a data security bill addressing the growing number of data breaches; and the increasing use of federal preemption in banking where federal agencies, including NCUA, have been exempting federally chartered institutions from state laws, such as the anti-predatory measures.

McLEAN, Va. – Mortgage rates continued to decline this week to their lowest level since January, according to Freddie Mac. The average for the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage dipped to 6.14% this week, from 6.12% last week; while the average for the 15-year, fixed-rate loan fell to 5.87%, from 5.91%. ARM rates also continued to decline, with the average for the one-year ARM slipping to 5.46%, from 5.49%; and the average for the five-year ARM going to 5.95%, from 5.99%. The lower rates have helped lenders and builders weather a fall in mortgage activity, according to Frank Nothaft, chief economist for Freddie Mac. “Mortgage applications for home purchases in November have remained healthy, due largely because of the drop in mortgage rates and a softening in home prices in some areas,” he said. The U.S. Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, which oversees the secondary mortgage market, said that home prices rose just 0.9% in the third quarter, the lowest quarterly increase since the second quarter of 1988.