A federal judge in Indiana sentenced a former credit union branch manager to three years in prison for using her position to rip off elderly clientele.
Teresa Palmer, 55, was sentenced Wednesday, including three years of supervised release after her prison term, on two counts of bank fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana said in a release. She will also have to pay more than $381,000 in restitution.
Palmer worked as a branch manager at a credit union in Columbus, Indiana, 205 miles southeast of Chicago, from 2014 through 2022, federal prosecutors said. The credit union in question was Centra Credit Union, according to Columbus newspaper The Republic.
From January 2021 through December 2022, Palmer stole from at least four accounts belonging to the elderly and, in one case, belonging to a person with dementia. Palmer used banking software to make unauthorized withdrawals and used the money on personal expenses, including gambling, federal prosecutors said.
Palmer also issued cashier’s checks from the accounts and made them payable to a third party. She then forged endorsements and signatures and gave the checks to tellers, claiming to have customer approval, before keeping the money, federal prosecutors said.
The credit union discovered Palmer’s scheme in 2022 after a client reported unauthorized transactions from her father’s account, at which point Palmer was fired. She was indicted in July 2025, according to The Republic.
“At Centra, our top priority is our members. When we uncovered a situation in which a former team member was suspected of taking advantage of the trust some members placed in them, we immediately took steps to address the issue. … We will continue to practice the strong internal controls that helped us identify this situation,” Centra told the Indianapolis Business Journal at the time.
