Money Vault Switch Expected to Land Former Montana Credit Union Employee in Prison
Edward Nurse admits he replaced Park Side CU’s real cash with Hollywood fake funds.
A Park Side Credit Union employee must have gotten the shock of a lifetime on June 21 when they discovered that $340,000 in cash at the Missoula, Mont.-based branch vault had been replaced with fake currency from propmoney.com, a California company that makes phony money, which looks real in the movies, TV shows, music videos and theatrical productions.
For roughly six months, former PSCU employee Edward Arthur Nurse replaced the real money with the prop money.
After Nurse pleaded not guilty to the charge of theft from a credit union in August, he changed his plea to guilty in U.S. District Court in Missoula on Oct. 25. He is scheduled to be sentenced in February. The maximum penalty is 30 years in federal prison and a $1 million fine.
Apparently, during those six months, no one noticed that the real money was gradually being replaced by the funny money.
After a credit union employee discovered the internal heist, a supervisor identified Nurse as a prime suspect because his primary role was managing and balancing money in the vault.
When interviewed by an FBI investigator Nurse claimed he did not usually carry much cash and, aside from a vacation he took to Las Vegas, he had not made any recent large purchases or cash deposits.
However, Wells Fargo filed nine Currency Transaction Reports for cash deposits into Nurse’s bank account. On each occasion the deposits were for more than $10,000 totaling $117,751, according to an FBI investigation.
What’s more, the federal investigators found that records form Prop Money, Inc., showed that Nurse made nine purchases from January 2024 to June 2024 for a total of $410,000 in fake currency, which was delivered to a post office box in his name in Missoula.
The $380 million PSCU based in Whitefish was later informed that approximately $50,000 in fake money had been received by the Federal Reserve from the credit union on July 5. After those funds were returned, an inspection confirmed they were from propmoney.com, federal prosecutors said.