Five former employees who collectively stole more than $2.1 million from credit unions were permanently banned from working at a federally insured financial institution, the NCUA said Friday.
Billy Ray Thomas Jr., a former assistant branch manager at the $1.1 billion Neches Federal Credit Union in Port Neches, Texas, was sentenced to 34 months in prison in May 2025 for orchestrating a loan fraud scheme that exploited member accounts to fund fictitious purchases of farm equipment, federal prosecutors said.
The scheme began in 2015 when Eulice Trey Alvey, then a manager at Oil City Tractors in Beaumont, created fake invoices for non-existent farm equipment. Thomas used those invoices to process fraudulent loan applications at the credit union. He used members' personal and financial information without authorization to secure the loans, which he and Alvey diverted for personal and business use. A Neches internal investigation revealed that Thomas had used family members and acquaintances as borrowers.
He was ordered to pay $1.36 million in restitution. Alvey was sentenced to 57 months in prison in June 2025 and was ordered to pay $2,075,458 in restitution.
A federal judge sentenced Aneicia Ford, a former employee of the $29.4 billion BECU in Tukwila, Wash., to 30 months in prison in December 2025 for selling members' personal account information to five coconspirators who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Within weeks of the start of her employment on March 28, 2022, Ford, who worked from her Tacoma, Wash., home, began selling members' account information. Before her termination on Aug. 31, 2022, she unlawfully retained the personally identifiable information of at least 23 members, which she passed to a coconspirator Dangelo Roberts, the scheme's organizer, according to prosecutors. Roberts, who made false IDs from members' information, recruited four other coconspirators via social media who used the phony IDs to obtain new debit cards and withdraw funds from members' accounts.
Ford was ordered to pay $345,014 in restitution. Roberts was sentenced in November 2025 to 36 months in prison and ordered to pay $146,016 in restitution.
A federal judge sentenced Tyra Brown, 27, of Benton, Ark., to three years in prison in April 2025 for stealing more than $300,000 from elderly members of the $6.4 billion Service Federal Credit Union. She continued the theft even after leaving her position at the Portsmouth, N.H.-based credit union and attempted to steal more than $126,000, according to court documents.
The former remote member service representative accessed the account information of at least 10 elderly members without a legitimate reason, and she often accessed accounts after speaking with the targeted members by phone. Brown then transferred their funds via wire, electronic debit or Zelle to various external bank accounts. She kept each transfer below $25,000, the threshold that would have triggered greater security measures and scrutiny at the credit union.
Brown was ordered to pay $301,674 in restitution.
Former accountant Ashley Viken was sentenced to 11 months in prison in February 2025 for stealing nearly $120,000 from the $2.3 billion Black Hills Federal Credit Union in Rapid City, S.D.
Beginning in July 2022 and continuing through March 2024, Viken wrote cashier's checks on a Black Hills account and then deposited those checks into her accounts at two small South Dakota credit unions. Using her access to Black Hills cashier's checks and the expired cashier's check general ledger account, Viken falsely documented that she reissued the cashier's checks or refunded them to credit union members.
She was ordered to pay $119,085 in restitution.
According to the NCUA, Abbigail Iglesias, who worked as a teller at the $4.8 billion Affinity Plus Credit Union in St. Paul, Minn., fraudulently reported mutilated cash in her teller drawer from October 2023 to December 2024.
A review of the credit union's records revealed that her alleged misconduct caused more than $6,500 in losses.
Iglesias neither admitted nor denied the NCUA's findings.
The federal agency's order of prohibition did not indicate whether the former credit union employee made restitution.
Peter Strozniak can be reached at peter.strozniak@arc.network.com.
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