ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The National Credit Union Administration has banned two people from credit unions for criminal activity. Oe of whom has been ordered to pay more than $800,000 in restitution.
Issued a notice of prohibition was Christian Wright, a former employee of Mid American Credit Union, Wichita, Kan. Wright was earlier convicted and sentenced in the District Court for Johnson County with the offense of Theft Over $100,000 in violation of K.S.A. § 21-5801.
Large Loan Fraud
Issued an order of prohibition was Kevin Spratt, former employee of Police & Fire FCU in Philadelphia, who agreed and consented to the issuance of a prohibition order and agreed to comply with all its terms to settle and resolve the NCUA Board’s claim against him.
According to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Spratt, 36, was sentenced to 27 months in prison and five years of supervised release for defrauding the credit union and multiple credit union members of approximately $772,155.84 through a combination of fraudulent loans and unauthorized withdrawals.
Spratt was also ordered to pay $822,155.84 in restitution.
Spratt was charged in September 2024 with one count of bank fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. He pleaded guilty to the information in October, 2024.
Worked in Branch Sales
“The defendant had worked as a senior branch sales representative at a federally insured credit union (FCU) located in South Philadelphia,” the U.S. Attorney said. “His duties included opening accounts, processing loan applications, and any branch duty other than depositing and withdrawing customer monies.
“As detailed in court filings, beginning on or about Oct. 1, 2018, and continuing through on or about Sept. 15, 2022, he stole money from the FCU by, unbeknownst to 10 credit union members, taking out a total of approximately 32 loans in their names and converting the loan proceeds to his own use,” the U.S. Attorney continued. “Further, beginning on or about Feb. 14, 2020, through on or about September 28, 2022, he stole money from 12 FCU members by routinely withdrawing funds from their accounts without the members’ authorization. Six of these FCU members’ names had been used in the aforementioned fraudulent loan scheme.
“According to the filings, Spratt deceived credit union tellers into facilitating the withdrawal of money from member accounts by, among other things, providing photocopies of the members’ driver’s licenses to the tellers as evidence that the absent members were in the credit union at the time of each withdrawal,” the statement continued. “The teller would enter the information provided by Spratt into a computer, which would allow Spratt to retrieve the member funds he sought from a cash machine. After receiving that money, he converted the funds to his own use.”
How Fraud Was Hidden
The U.S. Attorney noted Spratt was both familiar with, and personally interacted with, the large majority of the FCU members that he victimized.
“To hide his fraud from his victims, court documents state, Spratt routinely limited the victims’ access to banking services by cutting off their receipt of paper bank statements,” the U.S. Attorney said. “By doing so, Spratt controlled the flow of financial information to his victims and forced many of them to personally interact with him to address any issues related to their FCU accounts. This allowed Spratt to manipulate the outcome of any member inquiry.”