These findings were turned over to federal investigators who determined that Gold of Eldred, Pa., stole up to $200,000 from the credit union for 15 years. She admitted to the embezzlement during an interview with a U.S. Secret Service agent on Dec. 17, 2012, according to court records.

The NCUA continued its audit by removing 150 boxes of the credit union's documents that were transported to the federal agency's office in Austin, Texas.

The audit, which took many months of work by several NCUA employees, found that Gold used several different schemes to steal funds, which included taking cash, wiring credit union money orders to pay her personal bills, and creating false deposits into her checking and savings accounts.

Gold worked as the credit union's sole employee for 26 years and was paid about $13 an hour. Her primary responsibility was to keep accurate financial records. Because of the credit union's small size, it relied on larger banks to hold the deposits of members and to negotiate and pay personal checks and money orders. The majority of the credit union's funds were held in accounts in larger banks.

According to federal investigators, Gold made payments with her personal checks. When the checks were returned along with transaction information, she didn't reduce the balance in her checking account, which created an unbalance condition between the records of the credit union and the records of the outside bank. To conceal this scheme, Gold created false records, according to court documents.

Gold also stole cash from members after they purchased money orders. She then replaced the stolen cash with her personal check. When the personal check was processed, Gold again failed to reflect the reduction in personal checking account balance. Gold forged fake documents to cover up this theft as well, according to court documents.