Credit Union Employee Charged With Stealing $230K From 20 Dead Members' Accounts

On January 20, 2026, Teresa Lynn Margiotta — a nearly 20-year employee of Northwest Community Credit Union, later rebranded as Peak Credit Union, in Springfield, Lane County, Oregon — was arrested by Eugene Police and arraigned the following day in Lane County Circuit Court on 4 counts of aggravated theft in the first degree and 4 counts of aggravated identity theft, both Class B felonies under Oregon law, after an internal review by Peak Credit Union identified suspicious activity and prompted a report to law enforcement on September 5, 2025. Margiotta is alleged to have accessed the accounts of at least 20 deceased credit union members between August 2023 and February 2025, fraudulently issuing and reissuing checks from those dormant accounts for personal benefit across an 18-month window — exploiting the lag between a member's death and the full administrative closure of their account, a gap that investigators say her two decades of institutional knowledge allowed her to identify and manipulate. The National Credit Union Administration issued an administrative order in December 2025 permanently barring Margiotta from any federally insured financial institution, citing losses exceeding $230,000. The charging documents note that losses in a single or aggregate transaction reached $10,000 or more within 180-day periods, the threshold that elevates each offense to aggravated first-degree status. Among the 20 named victims in the charging documents were members whose estates had not yet been fully administered — meaning the funds were drawn from accounts whose rightful heirs had no reason to know the money was already gone. - - Disclaimer: This video is a dramatization based on real events. Some visual content was created with artificial intelligence assistance. Some details have been fictionalized and all names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.