Type | Credit union |
---|---|
Industry | Financial services |
Founded | 1916 |
Headquarters | New York City, New York, United States |
Key people | Kyle Markland, President/CEO |
Products | Savings; checking; consumer loans; mortgages; credit cards; online banking |
Total assets | $2.68B USD (2018) |
Number of employees | 568 |
Website | nymcu.org |
Municipal Credit Union (MCU) is a state chartered credit union headquartered in New York City, regulated under the authority of the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA). MCU is metro New York's largest credit union. As of 2018, MCU had $2.68 billion in assets. [1] It has approximately 425,000 members and 18 branches. [2] [3]
Municipal Credit Union was founded in 1916 for municipal workers in New York City. John Purroy Mitchel, New York City's Mayor at the time, wanted city employees to have alternatives to loan sharks and encouraged the chartering of the organization.
On November 2, 1977, the New York State Banking Department took over MCU for a brief time, citing loan delinquencies and corruption of Board members. [4]
In 1986, following the collapse of Hyfin Credit Union amidst charges of fraud and embezzlement, Hyfin was merged with Municipal Credit Union. [5]
A computer error in 2001 after the September 11 attacks allowed credit union members to withdraw amounts in excess of their accounts. In the month following the attacks, $15 million was stolen from MCU ATMs by its own members. [6] 118 members were charged in the thefts. [7]
CEO Kam Wong was placed on leave in February 2018 and arrested for embezzlement and fraud later that year in May when the credit union was placed in conservatorship. [8] [3] [1] For at least five years, Wong had been participating in insurance fraud and cash embezzlement through MCU's ATMs, and spent millions of dollars of this cash on lottery tickets. [9] [10]
On November 19, 2018 Kam Wong, pled guilty in Manhattan federal court to embezzling millions of dollars from the Credit Union and was sentenced to five and a half years in prison. [11] [12]
MCU was released from conservatorship in February 2022. [13]
Barry Jay Minkow is a former American businessman, pastor, and convicted felon. While still in high school, Minkow founded ZZZZ Best, which appeared to be an immensely successful carpet-cleaning and restoration company. However, it was actually a front to attract investment for a massive Ponzi scheme. ZZZZ Best collapsed in 1987, costing investors and lenders $100 million in one of the largest investment frauds ever perpetrated by a single person, as well as one of the largest accounting frauds in history. The scheme is often used as a case study of accounting fraud.
Bank fraud is the use of potentially illegal means to obtain money, assets, or other property owned or held by a financial institution, or to obtain money from depositors by fraudulently posing as a bank or other financial institution. In many instances, bank fraud is a criminal offence. While the specific elements of particular banking fraud laws vary depending on jurisdictions, the term bank fraud applies to actions that employ a scheme or artifice, as opposed to bank robbery or theft. For this reason, bank fraud is sometimes considered a white-collar crime.
Hot Lotto was a multi-state lottery game administered by the Iowa-based Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), which is best known for operating the Powerball game.
Brian M. McLaughlin is a former American Democratic politician and labor leader from Flushing, Queens.
A corporate credit union, also known as a central credit union, provides services to natural person (consumer) credit unions. In the credit union industry, they are sometimes referred to as "the credit union’s credit union". In the United States, corporate credit unions may either be chartered by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), or under state authority if permitted under that state's financial services laws.
Rosario "Ross" Gangi is a New York City mobster and former captain in the Genovese crime family who became involved in labor Racketeering and white collar crime.
Milton Yehoshua Balkany is an American Orthodox Jewish, past director of the Jewish girls′ school Bais Yaakov of Midwood, conservative political activist and fundraiser from Brooklyn, New York, dubbed "the Brooklyn Bundler."
The Ozone Park Boys, also known as "Liberty Posse" and "The Young Guns", are a Gambino crime family Mafia crew based in Ozone Park, Queens. They are infamous for their massive number of crimes, including an illegal $30 million-a-year sports gambling enterprise.
Craig Robert Thomson is an Australian former trade union official and a former politician implicated in the Health Services Union expenses affair.
The Postville raid was a raid at the Agriprocessors, Inc. kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, on May 12, 2008, executed by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security together with other agencies.
The Michigan State University Federal Credit Union (MSUFCU) is a credit union headquartered in East Lansing, Michigan. Primarily serving students and alumni of Michigan State University and Oakland University, MSUFCU is federally chartered and regulated by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA). MSUFCU is the largest university-based credit union in the world, and the second-largest credit union in Michigan.
Sculptor Capital Management is an American global diversified alternative asset management firm. They are one of the largest institutional alternative asset managers in the world. The firm operates multiple investment strategies, including multi-strategy, credit and real estate. It has nearly 400 employees worldwide including offices in New York City, London, Hong Kong, Mumbai, and Shanghai.
Lawrence B. "Larry" Salander is a former New York City art dealer and artist. His company, the Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, was cited by the Robb Report in 2003 as the best gallery in the world. By late 2007, Salander had been sued by numerous customers and business partners who claimed that Salander and his company had defrauded them.
Albert Gonzalez is an American computer hacker, computer criminal and police informer, who is accused of masterminding the combined credit card theft and subsequent reselling of more than 170 million card and ATM numbers from 2005 to 2007, the biggest such fraud in history. Gonzalez and his accomplices used SQL injection to deploy backdoors on several corporate systems in order to launch packet sniffing attacks which allowed him to steal computer data from internal corporate networks.
Kenneth Ira Starr is an American accountant and former money manager convicted of running a $35 million Ponzi scheme with the money of numerous wealthy and celebrity clients. Sentenced in March 2011, Starr has been released from the Otisville, New York Federal Correctional Institution under the supervision of the Residential Reentry Management (RRM) field office in Brooklyn, New York. Starr served the remainder of his 7.5-year sentence in a halfway house, and his term ended in December 2016.
The 2010 Medicaid fraud was a case of Medicaid fraud carried out by an Armenian-American organized crime group called the Mirzoyan–Terdjanian organization. The scam involved a crime syndicate which created 118 fake clinics in 25 states and used stolen medical license numbers of real doctors and matched them to legitimate Medicare patients whose names and billing information were also stolen. The group submitted more than $163 million in claims and received $35 million of that before they were caught. Prosecutors charged 73 individuals in several states with allegations of racketeering conspiracy, bank fraud, money laundering and identity theft.
International Investment Group (IIG) is an American financial institution that specializes in short-term trade finance and commercial finance with a focus on emerging markets. Through its affiliate IIG Capital it provides financing to small and medium-sized merchants, traders and processors with a need for supply chain financing.
In December 2012 and February 2013, a cyber-ring of criminals, operating in more than 24 countries, stole $45 million from thousands of automated teller machines (ATMs) in an ATM looting. Roughly $5 million was stolen around the world on December 21, 2012. Success led to expansion of the crime, when an additional $40 million was stolen on February 19, 2013.
Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services (DIFS), formerly the Office of Financial and Insurance Regulation, is a principal department in the Michigan executive branch with responsibility for insurance and financial institutions.
Bad Education is a 2019 American crime drama film directed by Cory Finley and written by Mike Makowsky. It is based on the 2004 New York magazine article "The Bad Superintendent" by Robert Kolker, about the true story of the largest public school embezzlement in American history. It features an ensemble cast including Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Geraldine Viswanathan, Alex Wolff, Rafael Casal, Stephen Spinella, Annaleigh Ashford and Ray Romano.