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Rush Credit Union manager who was jailed for €875k theft dies of suspected heart attack

Anne Butterly had been sentenced to two years in jail after pleading guilty to stealing more than €875,000

Charlie Weston

Today at 06:40

The former manager of the bust Rush Credit Union, who was jailed for theft, has died.

Anne Butterly died this week at her home of a suspected heart attack.

This month last year she was sentenced to two years in jail after pleading guilty to stealing more than €875,000 over a seven-year period.

It is understood Ms Butterly was ­released from prison in April last year having served around three months of her two-year sentence.

Her early release was on health grounds, an assessment of her ­potential risk to the public, and due to overcrowding in the Dóchas Centre.

A spokesman for the Irish Prison Service was approached for comment but said the Prison Service does not comment on individuals.

Ms Butterly (67) from Channel Road in Rush, Co Dublin, used most of the money she stole to keep her husband’s business afloat and to buy a car under “a fantasy” that it would all be paid back some day.

One of the most eye-catching events during her time as manager of the ­credit union was the controversy around “rigged car draws”.

A report into the governance of the credit union was unable to locate the winners of 15 car draws even though over €220,000 was spent buying the vehicles.

A notice on RIP.ie indicates that Ms Butterly died on Saturday. She is predeceased by her husband Willie, parents and sister. The couple had no children.

The Irish Independent first broke the story of the financial wrongdoing at Rush Credit Union in 2016.

Three different bodies with responsibilities for monitoring credit unions had failed to pick up on the suspected fraud and financial mismanagement at the bust credit union.

Once it was discovered that ­money was missing, it led to the financial collapse of Rush and Lusk Credit Union.

This saw the Central Bank being forced to seek the permission of the High Court to wind it up.

Its assets, including offices in Rush and Lusk, were taken over by Progressive Credit Union.

At a hearing in January of last year, Ms Butterly was sentenced at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to two years in jail after pleading guilty to stealing more than €875,000 over a seven-year period.

Judge Martin Nolan said it was an extremely serious offence and despite the woman’s serious medical condition and her plea of guilty, he felt she deserved to spend time in prison both as punishment for her crime and as a deterrent.

In the previous month she had pleaded guilty to three sample charges of theft totalling more than €34,000. She later pleaded guilty to a further three sample charges.

The court heard the total sum involved was €875,000, out of which she repaid €865,000. The court was told that all affected customers had been repaid by the credit union’s insurers.

Prosecuting counsel Aoife O’Leary told the court that in March 2016, gardaí were alerted to a significant degree of financial irregularities at Rush Credit Union and a full review was carried out.

Ms Butterly was the credit union manager and had worked there for a long number of years, having started as a volunteer.

A review found that between 2009 and 2016, funds of members had been transferred out of their accounts ­without permission and there were other unauthorised transactions from deposit accounts along with the purchase of a car using credit union funds.

Ms Butterly was described as a trusted member of staff in a small rural community and that such was the level of trust, other staff, including volunteers, would co-sign blank cheques.

Some members would allow her to retain their deposit books and she had a high degree of control, the court was told.

On occasion she would contact members offering them a better interest rate if they moved their money to a different type of account but the money would not be transferred to the new account.

She co-signed cheques, using them for her own benefit. Most of the money was used to pay creditors of her husband’s vegetable-growing business, which had run into difficulty at the time. She paid tax bills and gas bills for the business and bought a car in his name.

Ms Butterly had kept it afloat under “a fantasy that it would all be paid back at some stage,” her barrister Andrew Sexton told the court.

The net loss to the credit union was €875,000 and all customers had been repaid but one was still disputing that he had been fully refunded.

Ms Butterly’s husband had sold his business and family lands to repay the credit union and more than €865,000 had been repaid.

Ms Butterly had fully cooperated with the audit and with the garda investigation and had pleaded guilty.

Mr Sexton told the court Ms ­Butterly’s health had severely deteriorated in the previous seven years and she had a range of medical issues.