Delray Beach man who worked at credit union accused of using job to defraud account holders

State officers arrested a Delray Beach resident Tuesday, over a year after he allegedly used his job at a Pensacola-area credit union to defraud more than three dozen account holders out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Johnathan Coleman Jr., 28, worked at the Navy Federal Credit Union for about two months and, in a 37-day span from July to August of 2021, defrauded a total of 38 credit union members by accessing their accounts and funneling that information to someone who posed as the members and transferred their money to “mule accounts,” an arrest warrant said.

The account holders were defrauded out of over $350,000, and Coleman Jr. earned a cut from each of the illegal transfers, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Records show Coleman Jr. received a total of nearly $30,000 and was paid in CashApp and other mobile payment apps within 3 days or less of him accessing the accounts.

On one day in July 2021, Coleman Jr. accessed an account that had nearly $5,000 fraudulently transferred to a mule account, the warrant said. That same day he received a CashApp payment of just under $1,200.

A few days later, another account had nearly $20,000 removed, and Coleman Jr. was paid nearly $2,000 that day, the warrant said.

The suspicious activity was identified in August 2021, according to the arrest warrant. A senior investigator with the credit union asked Coleman Jr. about the large sums that were transferred into his own account at the credit union from CashApp and Apple Cash, to which he responded that his friends gave him money for food and other things.

Coleman Jr. then said he asked people for money to travel and for other “fun stuff,” the warrant said. He would not say who was paying him. A year later, Coleman Jr. refused an interview with an FDLE agent, according to the warrant.

Coleman Jr. is facing one count of bank fraud, one count of grand theft and one count of organized fraud. He was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail on $115,000 bond, FDLE said.

He will be prosecuted by the State Attorney’s Office that serves Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Walton counties.