Former Florida CU Employee Pleads Guilty to Fraud

A former employee of Florida’s largest credit union pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud in Tampa’s U.S. District Court last week.

According to court documents, Jamelah Y. Martinez, 23, of Tampa, worked at the $9.1 billion Suncoast Credit Union as an electronic funds representative who had access to member account information.

From December 2016 to May 2017, Martinez stole member account information and provided it to a co-conspirator who was identified in court documents as T.W. This person provided the information of member accounts to other unidentified co-conspirators. They called Suncoast’s member center and impersonated the true account holders in order to fraudulently take control of those accounts, according to court documents.

The co-conspirators also changed the email addresses associated with the accounts to the email addresses of the co-conspirators so that they would have access to the accounts. Court documents do not say how many member accounts were compromised.

The co-conspirators deposited fraudulent checks into these victim accounts and immediately transferred those funds from the phony checks to Suncoast accounts the co-conspirators controlled.  Once those funds were deposited into the accounts of the co-conspirators, they withdrew the money from ATMs and debit card transactions.

Suncoast later determined the checks deposited into victim accounts were fake.

Because of the fraud, Suncoast lost $115,487, federal prosecutors said in court documents.

“The safety and security of our members is our highest priority,” the Tampa-based Suncoast CU said in a prepared statement. “We employ extensive systems for fraud prevention which were instrumental in bringing this person to justice. It is our policy to prosecute criminal activity to the fullest extent of the law, and for the sake of our members, we remain committed to this policy.”