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Former credit union employees plead guilty to embezzlement

Two former employees face up to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty Tuesday in federal court to embezzling money from the credit union that serves TheBus employees.

Former teller Jenny Nishida, 41, admitted to Chief Judge Susan Oki Mollway that she used the OTS Employees Federal Credit Union Visa system to make 122 false payments to credit card accounts belonging to her and family members between 2009 and 2011 totaling $358,685.

She will forfeit any property traceable to the embezzlement.

Former loan officer Nicole Cheung, 34, also admitted to making 54 false payments for Visa card accounts in her and her family members’ names, totaling $16,732.

Nishida and Cheung were both released on a $25,000 bond.

Both face to up 30 years in prison, fines of up to $1 million, restitution and forfeiture.

Nishida will be sentenced on Sept. 8, and Cheung will be sentenced on Aug. 25.

A third employee, Dona Takushi, 54, of Honolulu, a former manager at the credit union, pleaded guilty on May 5 in U.S. District Court to charges that she doctored the books on loan and Visa credit card accounts for herself, family members and an associate and stole a sport utility vehicle that a member had turned in for repossession.

Takushi, 54, pleaded guilty to one count of embezzlement and two counts of making false entries.

She faces up to 30 years in prison for each count at sentencing in August.

Takushi pleaded guilty to making 153 false entries when she was manager of the OTS Employees Federal Credit Union from 2007 to 2012 to advance the due dates on her, her family members’ and an associate’s loan accounts.

The false entries enabled her to get two more loans and the associate to get four more loans that had a total outstanding balance of $55,188 when the false entries were discovered during an audit of the credit union in 2012.

Takushi also pleaded guilty to falsely inputting six payments from 2010 to 2012 totaling $40,970 on her and a family member’s Visa card accounts and to falsely recording a $18,251 charge-off in 2009 on a car loan for a 2008 Subaru Forester that the borrower had turned in because he could no longer make the loan payments.

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