TOLEDO–A former credit union president/CEO has been sentenced to prison.
Charles Robert Poore, 45, who pleaded guilty to embezzlement for crimes committed while at the $50-million Toledo Metro FCU, has been sentenced to two years in federal prison. He has also been ordered to pay $251,438 in restitution and serve five years of supervised released following his prison term.
While Poore’s lawyer asked for leniency since his client had no previous criminal record and is paying restitution, the credit union’s board sent a strong letter to the judge in the case.
“When the nature and depth of C. Robb Poore’s deception were discovered, we were in absolute disbelief,” the board wrote in its victim impact statement. “We were angry and upset by the betrayal of someone we had trusted so much. We were, and quite frankly still are, appalled by the bold steps he took in order to steal from a financial institution that went out of their way to help him on so many occasions.”
Toledo Metro discovered the crime following an internal investigation that found between December 2011 and May 2014 Poore had charged $269,593 to his corporate credit card for items the former CEO had said were office equipment and supplies. But those purchases represented just 15% of the items purchased. The remaining $233,933 in transactions, the investigation revealed, reflected items Poore had purchased through his wife’s Amazon account from a third-party vendor that he then sold to TMFCU using his corporate credit card at a much higher cost. He then netted the difference.