BILLINGS – A Billings woman who formerly served as the operations manager for Altana Federal Credit Union in 2023 was sentenced Wednesday to 12 months and 1 day in prison to be followed by 3 years of supervised release and ordered to immediately pay full restitution of $65,046.37, U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme said in a press release.
Kelly Jo Muzzana, 40, pleaded guilty in July 2024 to embezzlement by a credit union employee.
Federal prosecutors said in court documents that throughout 2023, Muzzana served as the operations manager for Altana Federal Credit Union in Billings. In that role, Muzzana had access to customer data and was responsible for managing Altana’s entire fraud-alert process. This included supervising the employees who documented customers’ fraud claims and facilitating what funds were reimbursed by Altana.
Muzzana also managed the fraud reporting system and was entrusted to independently authorize bank cards that were re-issued to customers or returned to the bank through the mail.
While working as the operations manager, Muzzana created duplicate bank cards for customer accounts and took them home with her . She did the same with cards that Altana received in the mail that were undelivered to customers.
Muzzana took numerous bank cards from Altana and used them to make purchases online and in retail stores around Billings, such as Target and Walmart, the press release states. After using their cards to finance her private spending, Muzzana personally handled many of the subsequent fraud claims to prevent detection by law enforcement.
Eventually, an Altana customer reported one of Muzzana’s fraudulent purchases to law enforcement. When a detective called Altana to investigate, Muzzana downloaded a recording of the call and, after learning of the investigation, fled the building and never returned.
Altana reimbursed its customers all of the money Muzzana stole. In a victim impact statement, Altana’s CEO, Jason Hagadone explained that the credit union “suffered significant reputation risk from this incident. As a financial institution, our members entrust us with one of the most important aspects of their life: their finances. Kelly breached that trust by stealing and using their debit cards.”
RELATED: Ex-Altana Federal Credit Union employee pleads guilty to embezzling $60K
