Legal issues and news

NORFOLK, Va. – Five individuals were arrested Friday and charged with accessing information of people who had applied for housing at a Norfolk apartment complex to siphon almost $90,000 from the victim’s Navy FCU accounts.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The former manager of the Veterans Administration branch of The Credit Union of Leavenworth was sentenced to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay almost $330,000 restitution for stealing funds from members she had personally befriended.

SANTA ROSA, Calif. – Redwood CU has cancelled 18,400 debit cards in the face of an apparent hacking into the database of Raley’s supermarket chain that has led to fraud on as many as 200 of its member accounts.

MADISON, Wis. – A former commercial loan officer at Consumers CU in Round Lake Beach, Ill, and at Fox River State Bank in Wisconsin, was sentenced in federal court yesterday to 35 months in prison for a loan scheme that siphoned almost $1.5 million from the two institutions.

YUMA, Ariz. – NCUA filed a civil suit yesterday against one of the borrowers in the AEA FCU member business loan fraud, seeking more than $9 million on unpaid loans.

PITTSFIELD. Mass. -- A former teller at Greylock FCU was sentenced yesterday to three years behind bars for stealing $200,000 from the credit union.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – NCUA this afternoon barred from credit unions a former teller at Cinco Family Financial Center CU who stole more than $600,000 from the credit union over nine years in bundles of $100s she disguised by stuffing the middle with $1s.

HOUSTON – The former vice president of lending at Members Choice CU pleaded guilty yesterday to creating $340,000 of loans in unwitting members’ names that he used to pay his credit card bills, his taxes, and for home improvements, among other things.

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. – An accounting clerk at Pinal County FCU has agreed to plead guilty to embezzling $781,000 by sending unauthorized checks to her mother’s Wells Fargo account.

FRESNO, Calif. – A federal court yesterday granted CUMIS Insurance Society a default judgment of $182,900 against a former teller at Educational Employees CU who stole credit union funds by approving 56 signature loans to family and friends.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The president of Veterans Administration Hospital FCU was convicted yesterday of embezzling $62,500 from the tiny one-branch credit union inside the VA to pay herself an unauthorized raise and for unreimbursed health insurance.

NEW HAVEN, Conn – Two Romanian nationals who drained tens of thousands from bank and credit union accounts with a sophisticated phishing fraud were sentenced to federal prison terms this afternoon.

TULSA, Okla. – Five men, visible on video surveillance, stole a Tulsa FCU ATM in nearby Jenks and hauled it away on a utility trailer just after midnight last night.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Eight individuals were charged this morning in a scheme orchestrated by a state prison inmate with a federal income tax fraud that deposited U.S. Treasury checks in accounts at Redstone FCU and Regions Bank, then disbursed the proceeds to conspirators from the credit union account.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – NCUA reported it is investigating what it suspects was an elaborate fraud that led to December’s failure of G.I.C. FCU, a $16 million Euclid, Ohio, credit union and is projected to cost the National CU Share Insurance Fund more than $6 million in losses.

COLUMBIA, S.C. – A federal court ordered Comcast to divulge the identities of certain Internet subscribers to AllSouth FCU in its bid to discover the perpetrators of an online phishing scam targeting its members.

LAS VEGAS – A member of Lockheed FCU (now Logix FCU) was sentenced yesterday to 98 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $4.9 million restitution for making false statements to obtain a $7.5 million member business loan that eventually went sour and siphoning more than $1.3 million of the proceeds for himself.

DENVER – A former assistant branch manager at Credit Union of the Rockies was sentenced yesterday to five years in a community corrections facility and ordered to pay $275,795 restitution for stealing from the credit union’s Black Hawk branch where she worked to help finance her gambling at local casinos.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – The 67-year-old former manager at Adams Municipal Employees FCU was sentenced yesterday to a day in prison and six months home confinement for stealing $160,000 from the $1 million credit union located in City Hall.

LAYTON, Utah. – A member of America First CU was charged with theft after he transferred $25,000 from his account the credit union erroneously deposited in it.