Former credit union CEO sentenced for bank fraud
NCUA examiners discover the Texas credit union’s computer system had been purged, hampering the criminal investigation.
Former credit union CEO Susan Margaret Garza was sentenced by a federal judge in Galveston, Texas Thursday to 36 months in prison for bank fraud that was uncovered more than five years ago.
There was a good reason it took so long for federal investigators to finally bring Garza to justice for stealing nearly a half million dollars from a Texas credit union.
When she resigned in April 2013 from the Electrical Workers 527 Federal Credit Union in Texas City, financial discrepancies were uncovered, and NCUA examiners also found the credit union’s computer system had been purged, according to court documents. What’s more, the credit union claimed in 2008 that it lost all of its records because of Hurricane Ike. No records prior to 2012 were available and no backup of those records was kept.
That meant examiners had to reconstruct transactions from daily work that showed Garza embezzled at least $466,675 over 17 years, federal prosecutors said.
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