Two former police officers who were members of the $37 million Wilkes-Barre City Employees Federal Credit Union were sentenced May 9 in U.S. District Court in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., for participating in a fake loan scheme.

Tino Ninotti, a retired police officer for the Wilkes-Barre, Pa., police department, was sentenced to one month in federal prison and two years of supervised release. Jason Anthony, a former Wilkes-Barre city police officer, was sentenced to time served and two years of supervised release with the first three months in home confinement.

They pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

Court documents showed Ninotti used the name of another credit union member to fraudulently obtain a $25,086 car loan. Anthony forged an individual's signature to secure a $7,159 credit union loan, federal prosecutors said.

Ninotti and Anthony were two of five defendants who admitted to participating in a $45,000 fake loan scheme that also involved the cooperative's former assistant manager, Amanda Magda, credit union member Jeffrey Serafin and former city contractor Leo Glodzik.

In November, Magda was sentenced to time served and two years of supervised release after pleading guilty to aiding bank fraud.

Jeffrey Serafin was the first of the five defendants to plead guilty in January 2015 to one count of bank fraud. He admitted to using an individual's name to fraudulently obtain a $10,000 loan, court documents showed.

Serafin, who was ordered to pay $11,578 in restitution, was also sentenced to time served and three years of supervised release in May of last year.

In exchange for Glodzik's guilty plea last month to mail fraud, filing a false tax return and possession of a firearm as a felon in other cases, federal prosecutors agreed to drop felony charges against him in the credit union case. Those charges included conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, intimidation of a witness, making a false statement on a loan and credit application, and tampering with a witness.

The five defendants were originally indicted in August 2014, just five months after Manager Jim Payne fatally shot himself at his Bear Creek, Pa., home in March 2014. At that time, public reports surfaced stating he was potentially being targeted in an FBI investigation.

Soon after Payne committed suicide in March, the FBI confirmed to CU Times that federal investigators considered the credit union a witness and victim in an ongoing criminal investigation, and that individual employees at the credit union were potential targets of the investigation.

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Cops Sentenced in CU Fraud Case

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