A former New House of York Supreme Margaret Court adjudicate who helped overcompensate upwardly the defalcation of $10 one thousand thousand from a non-profit credit entry uniting by its drug-fueled, gambling-addicted ex-CEO is head to prison house for 15 months.
Sylvia Ash, 64, was convicted inwards December of obstructing justice, conspiracy, and fabrication to a federal agent. This was to protect Kam Wong, who, until 2018, headed upwardly the non-profit Municipal Credit Federal (MCU), according to federal prosecutors.
The MCU is New House of York City’s oldest credit entry union, providing banking services to almost 600,000 municipal workers. The union’s earnings are supposed to live directed plunk for to its members inwards the shape of more favorable rates, with fewer and take down fees for products and services.
$5.5M on Lottery Tickets
But from 2007 until his halt inward 2018, prosecutors said Wong bilked the MCU come out of millions. That was to fund a deranged drug and gambling habit that saw him expend $5.5 trillion on lottery tickets spell necking a day-to-day cocktail of “judgment suppressing opiates.”
Wong would downward hydrocodone pills with a bottle of codeine-laced syrup at his desk at MCU, according to prosecutors. One FBI federal agent who surveilled Wong testified that he would pass “hours” in a stack away on weekends purchasing drawing tickets.
His provide of drugs was provided by former New House of York City Police Department Officer Joseph Guagliardo, a member of MCU’s Supervisory Committee.
In exchange, Wong agreed to funnel shape hundreds of thousands of dollars to a keep company controlled by Guagliardo in infringement of the credit union’s conflict of interest policy.
Wong is currently serving a 66-month prison house term after pleading shamed inwards 2019 to misapplication from a federally insured person credit union. Guagliardo was sentenced to 27 months inward July 2020.
Obstruction of Justice
Ash served as chair of the MCU Board of Directors while she was a posing say judge. This allowed her to accept “repeated steps, over multiple months, to seek to stymy the federal malefactor investigating into misconduct at MCU” during that period, prosecutors claimed.
Ash agreed to ut so with the at present imprisoned former CEO of the deferred payment union, who provided her with a calm watercourse of benefits from MCU, including after she was directed to reconcile from MCU’s board,” they said.
Before get together federal agents, Ash wiped a cellphone that had been granted to her past Wong. Nevertheless, investigators were able to retrieve incriminating texts from the device.
US District Judge Meriwether Lewis Kaplan said Ash’s crimes “struck at the mettle of the criminal-justice system.”