Two New Columbia Pennsylvania residents were indicted on charges of insider fraud against Nu Community Credit Union and its members out of $1.2 million over the course of several years.
The duo, Mindy L. Plasters and Brittany Aikey, worked at Nu Community Credit Union between 2009 and 2017 and are mother and daughter, respectively.
The feds allege the two, while insiders at Nu Community CU, applied for loans under the names of the CUs members, falsified financial information to qualify for the loans, used member identities without their knowledge, obtained proceeds from loans, obtained cash advances from member accounts, and ran-up member MasterCard accounts that were serviced by the CU.
Additionally, and this comes as no surprise, the feds say these two alleged CU inside fraudsters never repaid either the illicit loans or the cash advances.
While many credit union risk and fraud teams are doing their best to detect outside incursions, insider frauds at CUs should be monitored for as well. With access to member data, including account information and PII, insiders can commit frauds perhaps easier than any outsiders could, and conceivably on a larger scale as well.
The key to detecting insider fraud is to utilize artificial intelligence fraud detection and prevention tools that operate in real-time, and can detect anomalies in member data and employee activity within accounts.
You see, artificial intelligence solutions, like those provided by ToolCASE, may have been able to detect not only the unusual employee activities within member accounts, but perhaps the falsified financial information used to apply for loans as well.
Cash advances on member cards could have raised a red flag seen by real-time Ai, as the likelihood of these advances being anomalous to member activity is rather high. Unusual transactions in member MasterCard accounts could also have been potentially detected live, by ToolCASE Ai.
To reduce insider frauds at credit unions, its recommended that risk and fraud teams implement ToolCASE’s real-time fraud solutions. Had Nu Community Credit Union employed the ToolCASE technology, the alleged crimes of Plasters and Aikey may have been detected long ago, before $1.2 million went missing.
Discover the remarkable, real-time ToolCASE Ai fraud detection and prevention solutions, and see a full demonstration of its capabilities by visiting HERE
Or, read more about the insider fraud at Nu Community CU, HERE
