Former Long-Time Credit Union CEO Gets Six-Month Prison Sentence

Although former credit union CEO Saundra Torrence originally faced 33 felony counts of embezzlement, theft, fraud and making false entries, she pleaded guilty to only one felony charge for which she was sentenced last week to six months in prison.

U.S. District Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr. in Charlotte, N.C., also ordered Torrence to serve two years of supervised release, including six months of home confinement, and to pay $187,066 in restitution.

Torrence, a 27-year president/CEO of the $33.5 million First Legacy Community Credit Union in Charlotte, initially pleaded not guilty to the 33 felonies to a April 2018 indictment that accused her of embezzling more than $375,000, making false entries in the credit union’s books and records, stealing funds and using the identity of at least one third party victim to obtain a FLCCU loan.

Torrence served as CEO from 1985 to 2012.

At the end of 2012, the 8,364-member credit union posted a net income loss of $5.4 million and a net income loss of $424,176 by December 2013, according to NCUA financial performance reports.

Torrence’s former attorney, John Snyder, a white collar defense lawyer in Matthews, N.C., questioned why it took federal prosecutors six years to file these charges. He also claimed the facts of the case, as he knew them, were different from what the felonies in the federal indictment alleged.

“We have a forensic accountant that will be reviewing all of the entries, and we believe the facts bear out differently than what the indictment bears out,” Snyder said in a CU Times interview last May.

About two weeks after that interview, however, Snyder was no longer representing Torrence and Noell P. Tin, was hired as the former CEO’s lawyer.

While Torrence agreed to plead guilty to only one felony, false entries, it is common for prosecutors to drop some or all other charges in exchange for a guilty plea.

Tin declined to comment on Torrence’s sentence.

According to a “factual basis” document signed by a prosecutor and Tin in September 2018, Torrence admitted that she abused her CEO position and made a variety of false entries in the books and records of the credit union,

The factual basis document said Torrence improperly obtained a $35,000 loan from FLCCU in the name of an unidentified third-party without authorization. She also admitted to making false entries in the books, reports and statements of FLCCU, including in its loan application and loan file.

The factual basis document also said that the credit union received a $1 million loan from the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program in the Fall of 2010, but FLCCU did not fully repay the loan until April 2014.

What’s more, the credit union received other forms of financial assistance from the U.S. Treasury though the total amount of that assistance was not specified in the factual basis document.