Former Credit Union COO Pleads Guilty to Embezzlement

A former COO will be sentenced in July for embezzling more than $465,000 from a New York credit union.

Suzanne Silva, 35, of Carle Place, N.Y., agreed to plead guilty Wednesday to one felony count of embezzlement, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Richard P. Donoghue, said.

For more than seven years while she was a supervisor and COO at the $33 million Winthrop-University Hospital Employees Federal Credit Union in Mineola, Silva spent the stolen funds on Caribbean cruises, travel to Cancun and thousands of dollars a month on Amazon and Etsy, according to court documents.

Silva joined the credit union in 2002, became a supervisor in July 2011 and was promoted to COO in February 2017.

Starting in March 2011, Silva used her authority to transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars from the credit union’s operating accounts to accounts in her name and the names of family members, Donoghue said.

The theft continued through June 2018 when Silva was fired. A grand jury indicted the former executive in September.

Federal prosecutors did not say how the theft was discovered or how it was concealed.