Jolina Monique Sanchez stole more than $292,000 from two small businesses who hired her while she was under indictment for embezzling $300,000 from the merged Azusa City Employees Federal Credit Union in Azusa, Calif.
The criminal conduct of Sanchez even shocked U.S. District Court Judge George H. King in Los Angeles, who sentenced the former credit union manager Monday to three and a half years in federal prison and ordered her to pay more than $600,000 in restitution. She pleaded guilty to one count of embezzlement and one count of bank fraud.
"I can tell you that the judge did say in open court that he found [her] conduct to be shocking to the court and he referenced her chain of unlawful activity," according to a source who was present as the sentencing hearing but spoke on the condition of anonymity.
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What's more, court documents showed Sanchez was arrested for grand theft and forgery in 2006 for depositing forged checks in her account and withdrawing the funds from a former employer. And in 2009, while she worked as a bookkeeper for the California Philharmonic, she stole $50,000.
The Philharmonic agreed not to seek her prosecution after Sanchez agreed to pay $40,000 within 30 days, which she did. The 2006 case was dismissed because of prosecutorial delay.
Before Sanchez was hired as the manager of ACEFCU in February 2012, the NCUA did a background check and advised the board of directors that she had passed it, according to FBI investigative documents.
Almost immediately after she took the job, however, Sanchez began stealing from the credit union and embezzled $300,000 by the time she was fired in July 2013.
After losing her job, Sanchez landed a bookkeeper's position at Evan Franco Inc., a fashion company in downtown Los Angeles. In court documents, prosecutors said Sanchez wrote checks from Franco's business accounts to herself and her creditors without authorization and stole $265,000 from March 2014 to August 2015.
In August 2015, she got another bookkeeper's job at ClearChoice Windows and Doors in San Dimas, Calif., where she again issued $27,000 in checks from the business accounts to herself or to her creditors, according to court documents.
Sanchez was indicted for the credit union embezzlement in July 2014.
According to court documents, Sanchez embezzled credit union funds in three ways.
She issued fraudulent checks out of the credit union's general fund, or in some cases from member accounts, and funneled those funds into accounts she controlled, including one account she opened in her mother's name.
Sanchez also manipulated the account in her mother's name to make it appear as if it was opened on a date before Sanchez was hired, which allowed her to disguise her connection to the account, according to court documents. Sanchez's mother was not charged with any crime.
Sanchez issued checks from the account in her mother's name to accounts or individuals associated with Sanchez.
In a series of close-in-time events, Sanchez passed money through other accounts, including an inactive ACEFCU account at US Bank. That money was funneled through to the account in her mother's name to accounts or individuals associated with Sanchez.
Two of the accounts Sanchez stole from were owned by a woman who was in her 90s and a six-year-old.
In February 2013, NCUA auditors advised the credit union's board of directors that the books were out of balance and recommended that an outside auditor be hired to do a more thorough audit.
In October 2013, ACEFCU was merged into the $373 million Foothill Federal Credit Union in Arcadia, Calif.
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Peter Strozniak
Credit Union Times reporter covering credit union operations, fraud, M&As, leagues, business continuity, and breaking news.
