Teresa Palmer, former branch manager at the $2.3 billion Centra Credit Union in Columbus, Ind., admitted she stole more than $381,000 from elderly members' accounts and used the funds to pay for personal and gambling expenses, according to new court filings in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis.
Palmer signed a plea deal with federal prosecutors on March 30, agreeing to plead guilty to two felony counts of bank fraud. She was indicted on four felony counts of bank fraud last year. Her sentencing hearing is pending.
She targeted four elderly members whom she knew were unable to monitor their accounts, making hundreds of unauthorized transactions from January 2021 to December 2022.
According to the plea agreement, she stole $284,608 from Victim 1; $76,834 from Victim 2; $11,665 from Victim 3 and $3,291 from Victim 4. Palmer also stole $5,000 from a cash drawer.
In addition to making cash withdrawals from elderly member accounts, she also fraudulently issued cashier's checks from members' accounts made payable to others. She forged the signatures of the purported recipients on the backs of the checks and cashed them. At times, she directed other employees to cash the cashier's checks, falsely representing that the recipients had asked her to do so.
Centra said it detected the fraud and immediately took steps to address it. None of the members incurred any losses, and the credit union worked with the FBI's investigation.
Peter Strozniak can be reached at peter.strozniak@arc-network.com.
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