N.H. credit union employee gets 3 years for stealing money from elderly customers

CONCORD - An Arkansas woman was sentenced on Thursday for stealing more than $300,000 from elderly customers at a New Hampshire credit union.

Tyra Brown, 27, of Benton, Ark., will spend 36 months in prison and three years of supervised release. In January Brown pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of Arkansas to one count of wire fraud.

Brown was a customer service representative for a New Hampshire credit union where she could access customers' personal identifying information, security questions and answers, and account balances, according to a release from the U.S. Attorneys Office. However, she was only permitted to access customer account information for business purposes, such as to answer customer questions on calls. Brown used that access to steal $301,674.89 from at least 10 elderly victims and attempted to steal $428,526.85 in total. Brown used wires, electronic debits, and Zelle, a money transfer app, to transfer victim funds to other accounts.

"The defendant deliberately abused her position of trust and chose to target elderly account holders, knowing some of whom were unfamiliar with electronic banking," said Acting U.S. Attorney McCormack. "The U.S. Attorney's Office and our law enforcement partners are vigilantly working to protect Granite Staters from fraudsters like the defendant."