BEAVERTON, Ore. – Credit union executives and volunteers raised more than $90,000 for the benefit of the pediatrics ward at the local hospital during a silent auction, called Zoofari for Kids. The fundraiser kicked off a four-year credit union campaign to raise as much as $2 million to renovate the pediatrics neurological operating suite at Doernbecher Hospital. The new ward will be known as the Credit Unions for Kids Neurological Suite. The fundraising campaign will also fund an endowed professorship to be called Credit Unions for Kids Professorship in Pediatric Neurology. Credit Unions for Kids is the third highest fundraiser for Children’s Miracle Network, behind Wal-Mart Stores and ReMax realtors.

BURLINGTON, Vt. – The former collections supervisor at Vermont FCU was sentenced Monday to four months in prison and ordered to pay $44,700 in restitution for siphoning off payments the credit union earned for auto repossessions. Michael Monette, 45, stole thousands of dollars by altering checks from companies that sold repos. He deposited the funds in his own account. He also siphoned funds from a dormant account that had belonged to a dead member.

CALABASAS, Calif. – Digital Insight announced yesterday its board approved a plan Sunday to significantly reduce investment in the lending business and exit certain portions of the operations based on the division's continued under performance and diminished financial outlook. Digital Insight expects to eliminate certain operations and incur restructuring related charges, including costs associated with the lay-off of 20 employees in the unit.

WASHINGTON – Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced yesterday they will maintain the same limits on all conforming loans, that is, the ones they will buy for the secondary market, despite the first drop in average home prices in 13 years. The conforming loan limit on single family homes will remain at this year’s level of $417,000 as a result. The average home price in October fell 0.16% to $306,258 from $306,759 a year earlier, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said. The fall compares with an 8.8% average increase over the past five years. OFHEO, which regulates both Fannie and Freddie, said the impact of a home price decline in 2006 on the conforming limit would be deferred for one year. The conforming loan limit was unchanged to help markets prepare for any downward adjustments. "We made this decision so as not to disrupt the end-of-the-year pipeline of mortgages or the market for mortgage-backed securities," said OFHEO Director James Lockhart. A drop in the conforming loan limit may slow production of loans for sale to the companies in a market that is already shrinking.

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 Monday she did not “feel like a criminal” just before he sent her away to prison. Maria Guzman told police last June 12 that a man at the drive-thru threatened to blow up a bomb unless she sent him a bundle of $100 bills through the pneumatic tube. But the story didn’t pan out and turned out that Guzman actually took the cash herself. Guzman was sentenced to eight months in prison and ordered to make restitution. Because her husband is a resident of Mexico, she was also ordered to report any travel plans to the U.S. Pre-Trial Services Offices.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – Police were dredging the Chicopee River yesterday in search of Douglas Smith, a local businessman who was awaiting trial with his mother Carol Aranjo, the well-known community development credit union activist, and his father on federal charges they siphoned millions of dollars from the accounts of D. Edward Wells FCU. The 46-year-old Smith was identified as the man whose canoe capsized in the river Sunday while he was reportedly trying to retrieve his boat. Smith was charged along with four other family members in an 86-count federal indictment with looting the once-prominent CDCU, forcing NCUA to close down the 51-year-old credit union in 2003. Smith was indicted on 13 counts of embezzlement, filing false tax returns and filing false statements in connection with loans the credit union made to his company, D.A.T. Construction. Police said they have no reason to believe the accident was anything but a tragedy and were still hopeful of finding the body. The canoe was found above the Chicopee Falls dam but Smith was not located after an exhaustive search by local police and fire departments and the help of a State Police helicopter. His mother, Aranjo, rose to become one of the national spokesmen for community development financial institutions as chairman of the National Federation of CDCUs, and testified before Congress that federal agencies should deposit their funds in CDCUs to help spur community development.

WASHINGTON – Three Texas credit unions were among the top ten performers in the third quarter, scoring high return-on-assets in a very tough period for credit unions. The highest ROA in the third quarter among credit unions over $25 million was reported by Park Side FCU, in White Fish, Montana. The $75 million credit union reported net income of $2.5 million for the quarter for an ROA of 4.78%, according to Callahan & Associates. The rest of the top ten are: Leyden CU, Franklin Park, Ill., $1.7 million and an ROA of 4.34%; Southern FCU, Houston, $765,000 and 4.15%; Bridgeton Onized FCU, Vineland, N.J., $832,000 and 4.14%; Nizari Progressive FCU, Houston, $796,000 and 3.77%; West Texas CU, El Paso, $1.5 million and 3.76%; Progressive CU, New York, $8.1 million and 3.59%; First Capital FCU, York, Pa., $2.3 million and 3.58%; Mendo Lake CU, Ukiah, Calif, $1.8 million and 3.37% and Florida State Employees FCU, $626,000 and 3.34%. The average ROA for the nation’s 8,462 credit unions for the third quarter was just 0.88%.

DALLAS– The Credit Union of Texas said it donated $7,500 to the Dallas Independent School District to commemorate the credit union’s 75th anniversary. The contribution was made to the Superintendent’s Scholarship Fund as a way of saying thanks to past, present and future employees for their continued support.

CALABASAS, Calif. – Countrywide Financial, the nation’s biggest mortgage lender, said yesterday it has begun selling auto insurance in Colorado. To entice buyers, the mortgage banking giant is offering 23% discounts on rates to existing Countrywide customers. Countrywide Insurance Group, which offers homeowners and other types of residential products, will introduce the new auto insurance product in up to 25 additional states by the end of 2007.

DALLAS– The Credit Union of Texas said it donated $7,500 to the Dallas Independent School District to commemorate the credit union’s 75th anniversary. The contribution was made to the Superintendent’s Scholarship Fund as a way of saying thanks to past, present and future employees for their continued support.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – William Foley, the man who has restructured Fidelity National numerous times over the past five years, has benefitted from a run-up in the newly created shares of Fidelity National Information Services, earning more than $42 million over the past two weeks on the sale of 850,000 shares, as shares in the credit union outsourcer rose to almost $42 each. The sale of the shares came a month after Foley engineered the split of FIS from Fidelity National Title, and just two years after combining some eight back-office service providers, including cards processor Certegy, to create FIS. As part of the separation of the two companies, Foley earned more than $17 million by the acceleration of option grants. He was also granted 830,000 FIS options. The sale of the FIS shares left Foley with 2.6 million FIS shares valued at more than $110 million, and 1.3 million FNF shares valued at almost $30 million, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

WASHINGTON – The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said it plans to sue Fannie’s former chief executive Franklin Raines and former chief financial officer Timothy Howard in an effort to recover millions of dollars of salaries from the time the company overstated earnings by billions. News of the suit comes just days after Raines received $2.6 million as a “deferred compensation” settlement after being fired from the company in 2004. An OFHEO report issued in May said that Fannie employees manipulated accounting to hit quarterly earnings targets and allow senior executives to collect performance bonuses between 1998 and 2004. Raines earned more than $90 million from 1998 to 2003, according to that report -- including more than $50 million in bonuses tied to the company hitting earnings targets.

NEW YORK – A company that develops security technology for financial institutions has published a paper purporting to show how insiders at ATM networks and issuing banks can steal personal identification number codes and card account numbers, enabling them to make unauthorized cash withdrawals. Israel-based Algorithmic Research claims there are several weaknesses in the way PINs are sent from ATMs through network switches to issuing banks. Though the PINs are encrypted, the vulnerabilities make it possible for corrupt employees with access to the computers that decrypt and encrypt PINs, known as hardware security modules, to obtain the PINs and card account data needed to create phony cards. The company said several months ago it informed Visa and MasterCard about the vulnerabilities. Algorithmic Research has provided its customers with a series of steps that can minimize their risks, but company officials maintain that basic changes are needed in the data formats and standards of global ATM networks, and those changes are likely to take years to implement.

CHICAGO – Discover Network said yesterday it is relaunching its Cash Over program, which allows customers to receive between $20 and $100 over the amount of their purchase made with Discover Network credit cards. While the program has long been available at more than 8,700 locations, including Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Safeway Inc. and Jewel-Osco, the announcement that the Midwest supermarket chain Meijer will offer the program is the first in a string of marketing efforts to publicize the program. Discover is the first and only credit card company to offer cash back over amount of purchase with a credit card. As such, Cash Over transactions are charged at the interest rate that currently applies to the card.

WEBSTER, Mass. – Police yesterday were looking for as much as $80,000 missing from an ATM delivery truck that crashed en route from Rochester, N.Y. The Millenium ATM truck crashed in nearby Lee and the money was gone when police got there. Police believe the accident may have been staged or the money was dropped off on the way. The driver of the truck, 42-year-old James McCarthy, was treated at the local hospital for injuries received in the crash and released.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A man who escaped from police last week after being treated at the hospital was arrested yesterday while his girlfriend was withdrawing cash from her New Mexico Educators FCU account. Federal authorities had asked the credit union to flag the account and notify them when the girlfriend tried to access it. The escapee, 20-year-old Brandon Medina, escaped from custody at University of New Mexico Hospital last Tuesday when he leaped from the second-story of a parking garage, then fled onto the University of New Mexico campus. Medina had been arrested for robbery. His hand was injured during the arrest so he was taken for treatment to the hospital.

WASHINGTON – The World Council of CUs announced yesterday it has received another federal grant for its Afghanistan development project, this one an $8.3 million gift from the Microfinance Support Facility for Afghanistan. The funds will be combined with a $19.4 million grant from US Agency for International Development to help develop a system of microfinancing, in an effort to wean the war-torn country off growing opium, the source of the world’s heroin. US AID has devoted $80 million to the development of a cooperative financial system in Afghanistan, with plans to create some 50 new credit unions and 30 farmers’ cooperatives over the next five years. WOCCU will use funds from the latest grant to establish five additional credit unions in the Islamic financial model, which bars the charging of interest. WOCCU has been working in Afghanistan for two years and has helped built two fledgling credit unions, serving about 3,000 members in the northern part of the country.

WASHINGTON – Dissident members of Lafayette FCU were racing to force a special meeting of the credit union for employees of US AID and several other federal agencies, as management was preparing a final vote to convert to a mutual savings bank. Scott Steen, an employee at US AID and one of the leaders of ‘Save My Credit Union,’ said dissident members are approaching the necessary number of member signatures on a petition to recall the board of directors, and they hope to complete the petition before the final member ballot is cast early next month. But by then, a member vote to savings bank may have been concluded. “We’re going to move forward either way,” Steen told The Credit Union Journal yesterday, of the move to recall the board because of their effort to switch their credit union to a bank. Opponents of the charter switch have been allowed by US AID, as well as the Small Business Administration and Export-Import Bank, to solicit employees for their recall bid, according to Steen. Members of the $330 million credit union are in the second-stage of a 90-day mail ballot on the charter switch.

ESL FCU last week kicked off its annual "Stars for Seniors" program which asks members and friends to help fill holiday gift wishes for senior citizens. Each ESL branch has a holiday tree decorated with gold stars holding wishes-like playing cards, cologne, hand lotion and small gifts-for residents of local nursing homes. Since the program started ESL has collected 4,300 gifts for seniors.

ST. JOSEPH, MICH. - The board of directors of United Federal Credit Union has announced that Duane W. Nelson, EVP of the credit union, has agreed to serve as interim president, following the recent unexpected death of Dave Weichhand, who served in that capacity since 1988.