A former credit union employee who stole from the accounts of members who had died was sentenced on Friday, November 13, 2026, to two and a half years in prison in Lane County, Oregon. Teresa Lynn Margiotta, 51, of Springfield, pleaded guilty in October in Lane County Circuit Court to three counts of aggravated identity theft and two counts of aggravated first-degree theft, after prosecutors said she embezzled more than $232,000 from deceased members of Northwest Community Credit Union, which is now known as Peak Credit Union.
Source: Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Nov 13, 2026 (Lane County DA release, defence memo, court)
Lane County Circuit Judge Charles Zennaché ordered the prison sentence, to be followed by three years of post-prison supervision. As part of her plea negotiations with prosecutors, two counts of aggravated first-degree theft and one count of aggravated identity theft were dismissed. Margiotta has also been ordered to pay $232,725.84 in restitution, and the Lane County District Attorney's office said the credit union accounts were refunded.
Source: Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Nov 13, 2026 (Lane County DA release, defence memo, court)
How the money was taken, according to the federal order
The method, as described in an administrative order from the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), a federal agency, was quiet and paper-based. Margiotta, the order states, fraudulently issued checks from dormant members' accounts, then voided them, and reissued them for her own purposes. The accounts belonged to members who had died — people who could no longer check a statement — and the activity ran, the NCUA order alleged, from at least August 2023 through February 2025. The district attorney's office gives a slightly longer window for the embezzlement itself, August 2023 to March 2025, and says Margiotta was fired from her job.
Source: Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Jan 21, 2026 (Eugene police, NCUA order, Peak Credit Union)
Financial authorities acted before the criminal case ended. In December, the NCUA permanently banned Margiotta from working at any federally insured depository institution, such as a bank or credit union, according to the agency's administrative order. As part of a consent agreement, she neither admitted nor denied the investigation's findings, which stated she caused more than $230,000 in losses to Peak Credit Union, which is based in Lacey, Washington.
Source: Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Jan 21, 2026 (Eugene police, NCUA order, Peak Credit Union)
Nearly 20 years inside the credit union
Margiotta was not a new hire who slipped through. She started at the credit union in 2005 as a teller and worked as a senior support services specialist — a role a defence sentencing memorandum described as spanning nearly 20 years at the institution. That length of service and position of trust are the background to how dormant accounts could be reached at all, and they are why the case has drawn attention well beyond Springfield: the person accused of taking the money was one of the people members trusted to guard it.
Source: Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Jan 21, 2026 (Eugene police, NCUA order, Peak Credit Union)
When the case first became public in January 2026, Peak Credit Union said it had reported the suspected embezzlement to authorities on September 5, and that Margiotta had not worked at the credit union since July 2025. Laurie Kresl, the credit union's vice president of marketing, said in an email at the time: “Upon identifying irregular activity during their employment, we took immediate and decisive action, which included cooperating fully with law enforcement and regulatory authorities,” adding that “no member funds were compromised.” She said the credit union's systems and controls were strengthened as soon as the issue was identified. The DA's later statement that the accounts were refunded is the other half of that picture: the loss was made whole for members, and the restitution order now puts the cost on Margiotta herself.
Source: Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Jan 21, 2026 (Eugene police, NCUA order, Peak Credit Union)
The arrest, the charges — and the 20 named victims
Eugene police arrested Margiotta on Tuesday, January 20, 2026, a police spokesperson said. She was booked into Lane County Jail on suspicion of 38 separate counts of first-degree forgery, as well as numerous other complaints, including first-degree aggravated theft. Formal charges filed the next day in Lane County Circuit Court named 20 victims of aggravated identity theft, and prosecutors initially charged her with four counts of aggravated identity theft and four counts of first-degree aggravated theft. The October guilty plea, and Friday's sentence, resolve that case on the reduced set of five counts.
Source: Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Jan 21, 2026 (Eugene police, NCUA order, Peak Credit Union)
Debt, compulsive shopping — and why the judge chose prison
A sentencing memorandum filed by defence attorney Timothy P. Fleming stated that in the early 2020s Margiotta “began to accrue significant debt,” describing her spending as “consistent with a compulsive buying-shopping disorder.” Of the amount embezzled, the “vast majority of the funds paid credit card debt accrued at Best Buy, Sears, Costco, Old Navy, Ulta Beauty, and other similar retail establishments,” Fleming wrote. The memo asked for a sentence of 60 months of supervised probation rather than prison. Judge Zennaché instead ordered the two-and-a-half-year prison term.
Source: Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Nov 13, 2026 (Lane County DA release, defence memo, court)
This scheme worked, prosecutors and regulators say, because the account holders had died and their accounts sat dormant. When a family member dies, notifying their bank or credit union promptly, closing or settling the estate accounts, and keeping statements under review closes exactly the gap used here. It is a small, unglamorous step — and in this case it was the whole vulnerability.
The credit union behind the case
Northwest Community Credit Union no longer exists under that name. On September 15, it merged with TwinStar Credit Union and the two rebranded as Peak Credit Union, which has 35 branches in Oregon and Washington, according to its website. Springfield and Eugene, in Lane County in Oregon's Willamette Valley, are the communities where Margiotta lived and worked, and where the members whose accounts were used held their savings.
Source: Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Jan 21, 2026 (Eugene police, NCUA order, Peak Credit Union)
What happens next
Margiotta will serve the two-and-a-half-year prison sentence imposed on Friday, followed by three years of post-prison supervision, and she owes $232,725.84 in restitution. Separately from the criminal case, the NCUA's permanent ban means she cannot work at a federally insured bank or credit union again. No further hearing date was reported in the sources for this story. For readers in Oregon and Washington — including Punjabi and South Asian families in the Portland and Seattle areas who bank with local credit unions — the case is a reminder that the refund in this story came only after the credit union itself spotted irregular activity and reported it; families who settle a deceased relative's accounts promptly leave no dormant account for anyone to reach.