Feds still trying to determine if this credit union (named inside) was a victim.
An ex-judge and Municipal Credit Union Board Chair, Sylvia Ash, has been sentenced to 15 months in federal prison, will receive two-years supervised release after her sentence has been served, and must pay an $80,000 fine.
Prosecutors allege Ash deleted and hid evidence from a federal grand jury investigation and repeatedly lied to agents in order to protect herself (and former MCU CEO, Kam Wong) from a multi-million-dollar fraud investigation.
The judge in the case, Lewis A. Kaplan said, noting Ash’s role as a judge, the “crimes struck at the heart of the criminal justice system.”
Kam Wong, the former CEO, pleaded guilty in 2019 to embezzling nearly $10 million from the CU. Wong is currently serving a five-and-a-half-year sentence.
Current MCU President Kyle Markland said, “It is clear that Ms. Ash was loyal to Mr. Wong because of their quid-pro-quo relationship: He funded her lifestyle, even long after she resigned from her position with MCU and she ultimately covered up his malfeasance…”
According to Markland, “MCU was directly harmed by Ms. Ash’s conspiracy and obstruction. The investigative cost incurred by the credit union – both financial and intangible – would have been avoided if Ash cooperated with both the federal and internal investigations in the first place.”
However, prosecutors said in court documents that its yet to be determined if MCU is a “victim” and is itself entitled to restitution.
In the credit union and banking industry alike, fraud attacks occur from both external and internal actors. While most financial institutions spend much of their fraud detection time examining external threats, insider fraud is on the rise.
But new technology, developed by ToolCASE, may help put an end to insider bank and credit union frauds. Its artificial intelligence driven solutions can monitor all transactions (internal and external) in real-time, alerting fraud teams to threats that arise from almost any party, at almost any time.
What took investigators years to find (the $10 million MCU fraud), artificial intelligence may have been able to detect, and potentially prevent…
As it was happening.
Request a demonstration of ToolCASE’s credit union fraud solutions, HERE
Or read more about the Municipal Credit Union fraud, HERE
