Former Credit Union Employee Gets No Prison Time for $4 Million Fraud

Stricken with serious health ailments and wheelchair bound in a nursing home, a federal judge decided not to sentence a former credit union vice president to prison for his admitted role in authorizing millions in business loans in exchange for kickbacks from a real estate developer.

U.S. District Court Judge Mark Mastroianni in Springfield, Mass., sentenced Michael DiCenzo last week to time served to be followed by three years of supervised release, according to court documents.

DiCenzo, a former vice president of business banking for the $1.4 billion Greylock Federal Credit Union in Pittsfield, pleaded guilty to fraud, making false statements to federal officials and tax fraud, in July 2014. In exchange for his guilty plea, DiCenzo agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors and to testify, if needed, against former real estate developer Jeffrey Pierce, who was sentenced to 20 months in prison in August 2019.

From 2005 to 2008, DiCenzo authorized about $4 million in various loans and modifications for Pierce and his real estate companies by violating the credit union’s loan policies. The loan funds were paid to a front company created by DiCenzo.

In exchange for funneling these loans to Pierce, he provided DiCenzo with $134,773 in kickbacks. Pierce also provided the former credit union employee with the free use of a home constructed by one of Pierce’s companies and the free use of a BMW, which were purchased by one of Pierce’s companies with GFCU loans.

“At the time of Mr. DiCenzo’s offenses, his son was deep into an addiction that started in his teenage years. The damage that such a problem does to a family is profound,” DiCenzo’s lawyer Thomas O’Conner wrote in a sentencing memo to the federal judge. “Mr. DiCenzo found himself reeling, confused and vulnerable. He entered mid-life unstable in his view of himself and the world. In that context, he made what he readily acknowledges were terrible choices when he began approving improper loans for Mr. Pierce and then taking kickbacks from him. He is remorseful for his conduct. He has already suffered significant punishment for his offenses. He has lost everything he had personally and financially. He forfeited his good name in the community where he spent most of his life and he has entered the final stage of his life destitute and alone.”

The former credit union employee spent the kickbacks to pay for his son’s rehabilitation services, his daughter’s education and other personal expenses, court documents showed.

According to DiCenzo’s lawyer, federal prosecutors acknowledged that his client demonstrated genuine and sincere remorse, and they did not file any publicly available court documents that opposed DiCenzo’s probation sentence request.

DiCenzo, who had been working in the local banking industry dating back to the 1970s before he joined GFCU in 2004, agreed to plead guilty almost immediately after he had been charged with the crimes and met with federal prosecutors multiple times to explain his own involvement and how he and Pierce carried out the loan scheme.

Pierce’s sentence of 20 months in prison was later reduced to time served because of the pandemic. He is serving the remainder of his sentence in home confinement.

DiCenzo was ordered to pay a special assessment of $900. And like Pierce, he was also ordered to make restitution of $877,725 to the credit union and $2.9 million to the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland.