TAMPA, Fla.–A former employee of the largest credit union in Florida has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
According to court documents filed in U.S. District Court, Jamelah Y. Martinez, 23, who worked as an electronic funds representative at the $9.1-billion Suncoast Credit Union, stole member account information from December 2016 to May 2017 and then provided it to a co-conspirator who was identified in court documents as T.W. That person, in turn, provided the information of member accounts to other unidentified co-conspirators who then called Suncoast’s member center and impersonated the true account holders in order to fraudulently take control of those accounts, the court documents state.
In addition, the co-conspirators also changed the email addresses associated with the accounts to the email addresses of the co-conspirators so that they would have access to the accounts, the documents say. Those same documents do not indicate how many member accounts were compromised.
The co-conspirators deposited fraudulent checks into these victims’ accounts and immediately transferred those funds from the phony checks to Suncoast accounts the co-conspirators controlled. Once those funds were deposited into the accounts of the co-conspirators, they withdrew the money from ATMs and debit card transactions, prosecutors said.
Suncoast Credit Union lost $115,487 as a result of the scam.