She Thought She Could Get Away With it…She Was WRONG

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You have to hand it to her for being creative but her scheme didn’t work. Patty Lynn Mavrakis isn’t the branch manager anymore. She’s facing charges of embezzlement, wire fraud and using a fire to commit a federal felony. She thought she was rich.

Should have thought twice

The branch manager of the Valley 1st Community Federal Credit Union in Monessen, Pennsylvania thought she came up with a brilliant accounting trick.

She wasn’t expecting that fire investigators use science and technology these days which tell them exactly what did or didn’t happen.

The judge isn’t expected to show much mercy when Patty Lynn Mavrakis is arraigned on September 1. She thought she could get away with embezzlement by committing arson to cover it up.

There are only two branches of the credit union in the town and the one closest to her home in Belle Vernon happens to be inside a Walmart. If that’s the branch she worked at, things could have been a whole lot worse.

It seems that Patty thought she could cash a little $340,000 check for herself by putting the money in a duffel bag and walking away.

She was smart enough to realize that someone was sure to ask all sorts of annoying questions about where the money got off to, so that’s where her brilliant idea came in. To throw investigators off her tail, the 63-year-old bandit “set the bank safe on fire.”

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Get the insurance to pay

A federal level grand jury indicted Mavrakis Wednesday. They charged her with “embezzlement, wire fraud and using a fire to commit a federal felony.”

After she packed up the cash she thought she could claim it was destroyed in the fire. Her biggest mistake was filing the insurance claim to get the bank reimbursed for the money she stole. The incident happened back in September of 2016 but the red tape took until now to unwind.

Mavrakis could be released on bond if she thought she could scrounge up $50,000 for the unsecured bond.

She doesn’t have a lawyer listed yet either. CUNA Mutual Group can’t wait to see her prosecuted for the fraudulent claim she filed with them. They like to discourage others from coming up with similar ideas.

Mavrakis thought for sure that her supervisor would believe that “an electrical wire on the safe’s alarm sparked a fire, which destroyed the funds.” She rushed to turn in the fraudulent claim the very next day.

As soon as she “completed and faxed a proof of loss form, signed by her and notarized, that the fire caused the loss of $340,200,” she sealed her fate.