This is an update from the arrest article published on January 28th, 2025.
An Arkansas woman was sentenced Thursday in federal court for stealing over $300,000 from several elderly customers at a New Hampshire credit union, Acting U.S. Attorney Jay McCormack and U.S. Attorney Jonathan D. Ross announce.
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Tyra Brown, 27, of Benton Arkansas, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas to 36 months in prison and three years of supervised release. On January 23, 2025, Brown pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of Arkansas to one count of wire fraud.
“The defendant deliberately abused her position of trust and chose to target elderly account holders, knowing some of whom were unfamiliar with electronic banking,” said Acting U.S. Attorney McCormack. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office and our law enforcement partners are vigilantly working to protect Granite Staters from fraudsters like the defendant.”
The following are the court documents for details of the criminal charges and judgment:
“Tyra Brown had no compunction about swindling elderly victims out of their hard-earned money. What she did isn’t just cowardly, it’s cruel,” said James Crowley, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Division. “The FBI will never stop working to shut down elder fraud schemes like this one.”
Brown was a customer service representative for a New Hampshire credit union. Because of her job, Brown could access customers’ personal identifying information, security questions and answers, and account balances. She was only permitted to access customer account information for business purposes, such as to answer customer questions on calls. Brown used that access to steal $301,674.89 from at least 10 elderly victims and attempted to steal $428,526.85 in total. Brown used wires, electronic debits, and Zelle to transfer victim funds to other accounts.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation in New Hampshire led the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Alexander S. Chen of the District of New Hampshire and Katie Hinojosa of the Eastern District of Arkansas prosecuted the case.
PREVIOUSLY JAN 28, 2025
A Benton, Arkansas woman admitted recently to bilking elderly credit union members out of thousands of dollars. Service Federal Credit Union (SFCU) is located in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but Tyra Brown, age 27, was working remotely for the business.
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The complaint, filed August 15, 2023, states that Ms. Brown was a “call center representative from December 31, 2021 until May 19, 2023” and “assisted customers with depositing and withdrawing money, as well as transferring money from their accounts to third parties.”
The credit union maintained in the complaint that toward the end of Brown’s employment, she “improperly accessed credit union members’ accounts to obtain account information, such as the answers to security questions, that she later used to steal funds.”
SFCU claimed that Brown stole around $300,000 and attempted to steal another $126,000 from accounts held by elderly members. She faces up to 20 years in prison, along with a fine of up to $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss, whichever is greater.
Brown’s guilty plea of one felony count of wire fraud was during a hearing at the Eastern District of Arkansas Federal Court in Little Rock, last week, according to an article in Credit Union Times.
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