On the morning of Feb. 23, 2015, local and state police officers, FBI agents, a bomb squad, firefighters and paramedics surrounded the New Britain, Conn. branch of the $122 million Achieve Financial Credit Union, where CFO Matthew Yussman was shivering in a car with a bomb strapped to his chest.
Hours before this real-life drama unfolded, two men wearing army style jackets, black cargo style pants with ski masks and goggles covering their faces, invaded Yussman's Bristol home and forced him to drive to the branch to clean out its cash-filled vault. The men also tied up Yussman's mother and planted a bomb under her bed.
But the home invaders were never found, the bombs turned out to be fake and the credit union's branch wasn't robbed. The New Britain police investigation yielded no charges and the case was turned over in May to the FBI.
The Yussman case was the first of three similar armed extortion incidents that took place within eight months last year, in which criminals forced employees to rob their credit unions.
In April, Mark Ziegler, president/CEO for the $929 million Y-12 Federal Credit Union, and his family were kidnapped in a failed attempt to extort cash from the credit union's Oak Ridge, Tenn. branch.
According to the Knoxville FBI office, two men and a woman entered Ziegler's home in West Knoxville and forced the executive to go to the credit union and get an undetermined amount of money to secure the release of his wife and son. When Ziegler took longer than the trio anticipated, the kidnappers abandoned the plan and released their hostages unharmed.
In June in Memphis, Tenn., two black males wearing rubber masks, wigs and dark or camouflaged clothing kidnapped an FAA Federal Credit Union employee from her home and forced her to help them rob it, according to FBI investigators in Memphis. Before leaving the home, the suspects tied up the employee's sister, leaving her there. Using the employee's car, the suspects drove to a branch of the $105 million FAA FCU and forced her to let them in the credit union to gain access to cash.
After stealing an undetermined amount of money, the suspects drove off in the employee's car and later abandoned it behind a supermarket about 1.6 miles south of the branch.
And in October, criminals forced an employee of the $106 million Northeast Community Credit Union of Elizabethtown, Tenn., and her minor son to help the suspects rob the cooperative. According to local media reports, the criminals did not get away with any money.
In November, however, a traffic stop led Tennessee federal prosecutors to an indictment of two men who were allegedly involved in the armed bank extortions of Y-12 and Northeast Community.
Michael Anthony Benanti, 43, of Lake Harmony, Pa., and Brian Scott Witham, 45, of Waterville, Maine, were also charged with armed bank extortion of the SmartBank in Knoxville in July.
It is unknown whether Benanti and Witham were involved in the FAA FCU and Achieve Financial cases.
Though no arrests have been made in the Achieve Financial incident one year out, find out what Yussman's attorney said about the future of the case in the March 9, 2016 print edition of Credit Union Times.
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