Credit union worker swapped cash in vault with movie money in Montana, feds say
A man accused of embezzling about $389,000 from the credit union where he worked by replacing real money with movie money was sentenced to prison, federal prosecutors in Montana said.
The 35-year-old Missoula man was sentenced to six months behind bars and six months of home confinement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Montana said in a news release.
He’ll be on supervised release for five years once he’s out of prison and must complete 600 hours of community service and pay restitution, prosecutors said in the Feb. 26 release.
The man pleaded guilty in October to theft from a credit union, prosecutors said.
McClatchy News reached out to his attorney Feb. 27 and was awaiting a response.
The man’s attorney said in a court filing that his client struggled with a gambling addiction, depression and anxiety, and that he had no prior criminal history. He’s a “productive member of his community” and has a supportive family, the attorney said in the filing.
The theft happened between July 2023 and June 2024 in Missoula, prosecutors said.
The man “used his position as ‘team lead’ for the vault to swap the credit union’s cash with fake money he purchased specifically for this purpose,” according to prosecutors.
The fake money came from a company that supplies movies and other productions, prosecutors said.
The man “hid his conduct from security cameras, auditors and his colleagues by putting real money at the front and back of bundles of fake money. (He) made multiple purchases of fake money and stole the real cash from his work at different times over a seven-month period,” according to prosecutors.
The fake cash eventually was discovered, prosecutors said.
The man initially told investigators “that he did not usually carry much cash and, aside from a vacation to Las Vegas, Nevada, he had not made any recent large purchases or cash deposits,” according to prosecutors.
But records revealed that he’d “made at least nine cash deposits of over $10,000 each in 2024 into his personal account. The investigation also determined that during the first six months of 2024, (he) had purchased $410,000 in fake currency from a prop money company.”
The credit union later learned “that approximately $50,000 in fake money had been received by the Federal Reserve in July 2024,” prosecutors said, adding that “those funds were returned and determined to be fake bills from the prop money company.”
This story was originally published February 27, 2025 at 11:33 AM with the headline "Credit union worker swapped cash in vault with movie money in Montana, feds say."
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