NCUA Bans Former Supervisory Committee Member Involved in Fraud & Corruption Case
Joseph Guagliardo is serving a 27-month prison term for embezzling more than $400,000 from Municipal Credit Union.
The NCUA on Friday banned Joseph Guagliardo, a former New York City cop, who embezzled more than $400,000 from the $3.8 billion Municipal Credit Union while he sat on its supervisory committee for 25 years and supplied drugs to the former CEO.
Guagliardo was sentenced to 27 months in prison last July after he pleaded guilty to one count of embezzlement. He admitted to diverting more than $450,000 to companies he controlled, and he also admitted to supplying the credit union’s former CEO, Kam Wong, with illegal painkillers.
Guagliardo’s case was related to a widespread criminal fraud and corruption investigation at New York City’s oldest credit union that led to the conviction of Wong, who is currently serving a five-and-a-half-year sentence for defrauding MCU out of nearly $10 million. The investigation also led to the arrest of Sylvia Ash, a Brooklyn state Supreme Court judge charged with trying to cover up Wong’s crimes and then lying to federal investigators. Ash joined the MCU board in 2008 and became its board chair in 2015. She resigned in August 2016.
Ash, who has been suspended from the bench, has pleaded not guilty to three felony counts of obstructing justice. Her jury trial has been tentatively scheduled for October.
The NCUA’s ban order means Guagliardo is prohibited from participating in the affairs of any federally-insured financial institution.
MCU was placed into conservatorship by the NCUA in May 2019 following fraud and corruption probe.
Last November, the NCUA appointed Kyle Markland as MCU president/CEO, which the independent federal agency said completes “the next step in (MCU’s) recovery plan.”
At the end of 2020, the credit union posted income of $45.9 million compared to an income loss of $82.7 million in December 2019, according to NCUA financial performance reports.
At the end of last year, MCU posted an undercapitalized net worth of 4.96%, slightly higher than its undercapitalized net worth of 4.74% in December 2019, according to NCUA financial performance reports. Although MCU saw its total loans decline by more than 5% in 2020, it grew membership by 3% and assets by more than 25%.