Woman gets 33-month term for bank fraud

A Clementon woman was sentenced to more than two years in federal prison yesterday for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the South Jersey Federal Credit Union while she was acting as a vice president of loss prevention.

Nora Phelps, 48, will serve 33 months in prison and also was ordered to pay $342,827 in restitution. She will have five years of supervised release, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, during which she will be prohibited from having a job in which she is responsible for financial transactions or accounts.

Phelps pleaded guilty to bank fraud in June. She had worked for the credit union since 1977, and in her position was responsible for collecting delinquent loans and minimizing losses due to fraud.

Phelps admitted that sometime around 2005, she began transferring funds into accounts that she controlled, often by taking money collected from credit union members who were making payments on their loans.

--Allison Steele