One of the co-conspirators, Caeshara Cannon, a former Broadview member services representative, used her position to obtain account information of members with substantial funds on deposit. Last October, she was sentenced to 16 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $77,200 in restitution, and her former boyfriend, Allahson Allah, who pressured her to participate in the fraud scheme, was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $88,800 in restitution, court documents showed.

Cutler used the members’ account information to create counterfeit checks, which were then written to himself and co-conspirators who presented them for negotiation at Broadview.

Additionally, he used members’ identities to orchestrate a series of fraudulent loan applications at the credit union. He obtained fake driver’s licenses in members’ names but bearing the photographs of co-conspirators to fraudulently apply for loans in the names of, and against the credit of, the identity theft victims, prosecutors said.

“Simply put, the defendant (Cutler) was the brains behind this operation,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo to Judge Nardacci. “Without his fraud skills and supervision of lower-level members of the conspiracy, none of these crimes would have occurred.”

Two other co-conspirators, Dnauticah Taylor-Sterman and Davon Parson, were also involved in the loan scheme. In December, Taylor-Sterman was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay $25,000 in restitution, while Parson was sentenced last September to 15 months’ incarceration and ordered to pay $9,000 in restitution.

In total, the fraudsters netted $88,800, with intended losses of over $100,000, prosecutors said.