A former assistant branch manager for a Maryland credit union will be sentenced in April after admitting she worked with four other suspects in a bank fraud conspiracy that stole $327,000 from a member's account.
And in another theft case, a former employee, who could have faced up to 30 years in prison, was sentenced Monday to only to one day in prison and five years of supervised release for stealing more than $80,000 from a credit union in West Virginia.
Valerie Hughes, who worked at the $263 million Nymeo Federal Credit Union based in Frederick, Md., pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md.
She admitted accessing personal information of member accounts that were dormant. That information included the name, address, Social Security number, date of birth, current balance, account number and phone number associated with the member victim, according to court documents.
With that information, one of the suspects walked into the Nymeo FCU's Gaithersburg branch in February 2017. The male suspect presented Hughes with a completed wire transfer form that requested the transfer of $327,000 from a dormant member's account to a Wells Fargo business account. The suspect gave Hughes a fake Maryland driver's license in the name of the member with the suspect's photo.
The wire transfer was initiated and authorized by Hughes. Once that transaction was completed, the suspect made a $6,000 cash withdrawal from the member's account.
In March, the same male suspect walked into the branch and requested Hughes authorize a $80,000 wire transfer from the same member's account to the Wells Fargo business account. The suspect also withdrew $6,000 from the member's account, which Hughes processed, according to court documents.
However, this time the wire transfer was not authorized because another Nymeo FCU employee recognized that the suspect was not the member who owned that account.
Hughes told police investigators that she was approached to participate in the fraud scheme by the four suspects, claiming they did similar fraud jobs but were never caught. The suspects were charged with various fraud felonies.
Michelle K. Martin, of Wellsburg, West Va. pleaded guilty to one count of theft last December. Martin admitted she embezzled approximately $82,000 from the $45 million Strip Steel Community Federal Credit Union in Weirton from October 2016 to May 2017. Her position at the credit union was not identified in court documents.
U.S. District Judge Frederick P. Stamp Jr. in Wheeling ordered the former employee to pay restitution of $82,000 to “Victim No. 1” who was not identified in court documents, though presumably Victim No. 1 is or was a credit union member.
The federal judge's “statement of reasons” document for sentencing Martin to only one day in prison was sealed and not publicly available. Another document that was not publicly available online was Martin's plea agreement with federal prosecutors.
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