FORTY FORT, Pa. — A former credit union employee has been sentenced to prison for stealing more than $16,000 from a teller drawer and safe and blaming the theft on two armed bank robbers whom she invented to explain the missing money.
Senior U.S. District Judge Robert D. Mariani sentenced Nicole Hilstolsky, 48, to eight months in prison and two years on supervised release, a sentence that is stiffer penalty the probationary term her defense attorneys sought, but still at the low end of the range calculated from federal sentencing guidelines, according to WNEP.
Hilstolsky worked at the now-defunct W.O.D. Federal Credit Union in Forty Fort, where in 2018 she claimed armed armed robbers held her at gunpoint and made off with $16,247 and the credit union’s security camera system, court records show.
“None of that happened,” Assistant U.S. Attorney James M. Buchanan wrote in a memorandum that asked the judge to impose a prison sentence, the report stated. “(Hilstolsky) emptied out the credit union of cash, she ripped out the security camera, and she hid those items while lying to the police and FBI. Due to her lies, the investigators spent time searching for dangerous, armed criminals, who did not, in fact, exist.”
The report said Hilstolsky came clean nearly seven years later when she was caught misappropriating $950 from her then-employer, the UFCW Credit Union in Wyoming.
Gambling Problem Cited
Federal prosecutors said she used the money to pay off debts. Her attorney, Christopher R. Opiel, wrote in filings she has a gambling addiction and sought treatment and counseling in November, when she agreed to plead guilty in federal court to one count of theft by a credit union employee. She officially entered that plea Dec. 5, WNEP said.
“Mrs. Hilstolsky has personally learned her lesson due to her significant embarrassment of having to admit to her loved ones that she engaged in this criminal conduct,” Opiel wrote in a filing that sought a more lenient sentence. “Nonetheless, Mrs. Hilstolsky has taken all the right steps to assure that she does not commit another crime.
