Oklahoma's largest credit union helped police bust an auto loan fraud scheme that involved 22 people.
Employees responsible for due diligence on loan applications at the $3.7 billion Tinker Federal Credit Union in Oklahoma City initially detected that several people allegedly applied for car loans with fraudulent information from April 2016 to September 2016.
Tinker handed over its information to the Tulsa Police Department, which investigated the bogus car loan applications and began arresting 22 suspects last week.
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Barry Paul Wright Jr., who was one of the co-defendants listed in court documents, reportedly walked into a Tinker branch in April 2016 and used fake documents to get a $20,000 auto loan approved to buy a Mercedes Benz. Since then, 21 other people got involved in the fraud as well, according to local media reports.
"All 21 claimed they paid Wright more than $2,000 for fake Social Security numbers and paystubs," KRJH, a Tulsa-based news station, reported. "Wright even created fake businesses such as Wright Way Communications."
The 41-year-old Wright was charged with 23 felony counts of obtaining property under false pretenses. The other 21 co-defendants have each been charged with one felony count of obtaining property under false pretences, according to Oklahoma state court records.
The car loans ranged from $10,000 to $22,000.
"It was pretty much our operations and lending departments doing their standard due diligence looking at delinquency and charge-off trends, and they started putting the pieces of information together," Matt Stratton, vice president of marketing for Tinker, said. "That information was turned over to our fraud department, and once they got all of the documents together, they handed that information over to the police. It turns out this guy was apparently just selling Social Security numbers and fraudulent pay stubs for folks that wanted to get a car loan but had terrible credit."
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