Former Indiana CU Assistant Manager Sentenced for Bank Fraud
A former Illinois credit union teller gets prison time and a former Florida credit union employee is charged with theft.
Paula Awe, a former assistant manager of an Indiana credit union who ran a check-kiting scheme along with her manager, was sentenced last week to 18 months in prison.
U.S. District Court Judge Jon E. DeGulio in Hammond, Ind., also ordered Awe to pay $180,000 restitution and to serve two years of supervised release following her prison sentence.
She pleaded guilty to bank fraud in February.
Awe and her manager, Sandra Santay, of the Lakeside Federal Credit Union in Hammond, had each been operating two independent check-kiting schemes that fraudulently inflated their respective share accounts over three years, according to court documents.
The scheme was detected by a routine NCUA examination.
Santay, who managed the credit union for 37 years, was sentenced in May to 27 months in prison and was ordered to pay restitution of $491,169.
Santay spent the credit union’s funds on her gambling addiction. Awe used the credit union’s funds to pay personal expenses.
The NCUA liquidated the $7.5 million Lakeside FCU in 2015.
In Illinois, a former teller for the $16.3 million ADM Credit Union in Decatur, was sentenced to six months in prison last month after she pleaded guilty to stealing more than $66,000.
Karen S. Buxton was also ordered to pay $66,584 in restitution and serve 24 months on probation following her prison sentence.
Police said Buxton stole funds from two members, created phony email accounts to enroll them in online banking and then forged their signatures on banking transactions, according to local media reports.
In Florida, Pamela Sanford, a former employee for the $671 million Gulf Winds Credit Union in Pensacola, has been charged with bank fraud, grand theft, forgery and criminal use of a person’s ID for someone over 60 years of age.
Sanford allegedly stole more than $6,000 from an elderly member who she befriended. The member said he took out a $1,000 loan to help Sanford, according Tallahassee police investigator reports.
Although Sanford made some payments on the $1,000 loan, she also allegedly took out four advances totaling $5,000 from the original loan, and she allegedly forged the member’s signature, according to police records.