PEKIN, Ill.—Charles Juska, the former CEO at Tazewell County School Employees CU who is accused of using forgery to misapply $500,000 of the $25-million CU’s funds, claims he did nothing to defraud the credit union.
Juska made the assertion this week in court as his trial finally began after proceedings have been on hold for two years due to numerous continuances.
Juska, who testified in his own defense, argued that “he just wanted to help out others who had fallen on bad times,” but he did so at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Pekin-based credit union, the prosecutor said in opening arguments Tuesday, according to the East Peoria Times-Courier.
“Not one penny went into his pocket,” Juska’s defense attorney countered, according to the Times-Courier. “Errors were made, but at what point do business judgment errors enter into criminal conduct?”
The jury in Peoria’s U.S. District Court heard Monday that Juska’s “errors” allegedly included covering late loan payments for some members with funds from loans taken out in other members’ names without their knowledge, the Times-Courier reported.
Juska, 53, is charged with committing 18 counts of bank fraud, misapplication of funds through forgery and making false entries in records of the Tazewell County School Employees Credit Union between 2005-2010. His trial could extend into next week.
“He engaged in certain loan practices that were just beyond belief,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Darilyn Knauss, according to the newspaper. “If a member was defaulting on a loan, not a problem. He’d just write a new loan for them” using the same collateral as the first one or none at all, “and put a little extra in. In effect, the credit union was making payments” on bad loans.
Defense attorney Joel Brown countered that Juska “never did anything he didn’t think he had the authority or (credit union) board permission to do, including signing documents.
“There was no scheme to defraud, no criminal intent here,” said Brown, according to the Times-Courier.
Juska’s motive, Knauss said, was to keep bad loans off the books of the credit union he operated for 17 years until he resigned in 2010 after a series of audits revealed his practices.
According to the Times-Courier, Brown contended Juska was “under pressure” to issue loans and sought to keep members for the credit union by helping them avoid defaults.