Former CEO sentenced in $9.9M embezzlement of credit union
He used his position as CEO of the oldest credit union in New York State — and one of the oldest and largest in the nation — to embezzle almost $9.9 million, which he used to buy luxury automobiles, an array of expensive electronic devices, hotel stays and meals, even living expenses for friends' relatives, authorities said.
On Tuesday, Kam Wong, 63, of Valley Stream, was sentenced to 66 months in federal prison and ordered to forfeit $9,890,375 and pay that sum in restitution to the Municipal Credit Union of New York, where he'd served as CEO from 2007 until shortly after his arrest in May 2018.
The sentence was imposed by U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl, who had accepted a guilty plea from Wong in April. It was announced by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey S. Berman, who said in a statement: "For years, Kam Wong, then-CEO of New York's oldest credit union, betrayed the credit union's hard-working members from the perch of his executive suite by siphoning off millions of dollars in company money for his personal benefit. Wong then tried to cover up what he had done by making false statements to federal investigators and creating false and misleading documents."
As part of his plea, Wong also was sentenced to three years of supervised release.
Authorities said Wong "engaged in a long-running multi-faceted scheme to obtain money from MCU to which he knew he was not entitled, and took steps to seek to conceal what he had done."
As part of the scheme, Berman said in a statement, Wong "defrauded MCU," which has 588,000 members, by submitting "invoices for dental work never performed," as well as the purchase of a Mercedes-Benz and the leasing of other luxury vehicles, not to mention the purchase of iPhones, iPads and other laptops.
There also were hotel stays, expensive meals, vehicle repair bills, money taken in lieu of purported long-term disability insurance and educations, housing and living expenses for the adult relatives of two friends. Other diverted funds went toward the acquisition of "controlled substances for his personal use," Berman said in his statement.
John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”
