Municipal Credit Union
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Municipal Credit Union (MCU) is a state chartered
credit union A credit union, a type of financial institution similar to a commercial bank, is a member-owned nonprofit financial cooperative. Credit unions generally provide services to members similar to retail banks, including deposit accounts, provisi ...
headquartered in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, regulated under the authority of the
National Credit Union Administration The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) is a government-backed insurer of credit unions in the United States, one of two agencies that provide deposit insurance to depositors in U.S. depository institutions, the other being the Federa ...
(NCUA). MCU is metro New York's largest credit union. As of 2018, MCU had $2.68 billion in assets. It has approximately 425,000 members and 18 branches.


History

Municipal Credit Union was founded in 1916 for municipal workers in New York City.
John Purroy Mitchel John Purroy Mitchel (July 19, 1879 – July 6, 1918) was the 95th mayor of New York, from 1914 to 1917. At 34, he was the second-youngest mayor and he is sometimes referred to as "The Boy Mayor of New York." Mitchel is remembered for his sho ...
, New York City's Mayor at the time, wanted city employees to have alternatives to
loan shark A loan shark is a person who offers loans at extremely high interest rates, has strict terms of collection upon failure, and generally operates outside the law. Description Because loan sharks operate mostly illegally, they cannot reasonably ...
s and encouraged the chartering of the organization. On November 2, 1977, the New York State Banking Department took over MCU for a brief time, citing loan delinquencies and corruption of Board members. In 1986, following the collapse of Hyfin Credit Union amidst charges of fraud and embezzlement, Hyfin was merged with Municipal Credit Union. A computer error in 2001 after the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
allowed credit union members to withdraw amounts in excess of their accounts. In the month following the attacks, $15 million was stolen from MCU ATMs by its own members. 118 members were charged in the thefts. CEO Kam Wong was placed on leave in February 2018 and arrested for embezzlement and fraud later that year in May when the credit union was placed in conservatorship. For at least five years, Wong had been participating in insurance fraud and cash embezzlement through MCU's ATMs, and spent millions of dollars of this cash on lottery tickets. On November 19, 2018 Kam Wong, pled guilty in Manhattan federal court to embezzling millions of dollars from the Credit Union and was sentenced to five and a half years in prison. MCU was released from conservatorship in February 2022.


References


External links

*{{commons category-inline, Municipal Credit Union
Official website
Credit unions based in New York (state) Companies based in New York City Banks established in 1916