Enfield Woman Sentenced to Prison for Embezzlement Scheme

ENFIELD, CT — An Enfield woman who embezzled more than $840,000 from her employer was sentenced to prison Wednesday by a federal judge.

Pamela Mallory, 43, was sentenced to 21 months imprisonment, followed by five years of supervised release, by U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny in Hartford, according to a statement from Deirdre M. Daly, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Mallory was employed as the lending manager of Windsor Locks-based 360 Federal Credit Union. In her position, she had access to loan files and authorized loans, including home equity lines of credit (“HELOCs”), Daly said.

From 2009 through 2016, Mallory opened five different HELOCs in the name of a credit union member and increased the credit limit of those HELOCs on at least 15 occasions, all without the knowledge or consent of the credit union member, Daly said.

Initially, Mallory perpetrated this scheme by opening subsequent HELOCs to pay off earlier, smaller HELOCs. Later in the scheme, rather than opening new HELOCs, she simply increased the credit limits on two of the fraudulent HELOCs to support her spending, Daly said.

In order to evade detection, Mallory made minimum, interest-only payments on the HELOCs from her own checking account, according to Daly.

When 360 Federal Credit Union discovered the scheme in Jan. 2016, the credit union member’s property, which is worth less than $150,000, supported two HELOCs, each with credit limits of $417,000, that Mallory had fully drawn down. In total, she stole approximately $840,378.28 from 360 Federal Credit Union and used the proceeds of the scheme to pay her own creditors, Daly said.

She had pleaded guilty in May to one count of embezzlement by a credit union employee.

Judge Chatigny ordered Mallory to make full restitution, and ordered her to report to prison on Sept. 28, 2016.

"While the 360 Federal Credit Union has been able to recover its financial loss through insurance, we remain disappointed and saddened by Pamela Mallory’s breach of trust," Robert L. Aresti, President and CEO of 360 Federal Credit Union, said in a written statement. "We thank the U.S. Attorney’s office, the FBI and the courts for bringing this matter to a just conclusion so that we can put it fully behind us and focus our total energies on providing the highest level of financial services to our more than 17,000 members.”