A onetime employee with an east metro credit union was sentenced to more than a year in prison for cheating a computer parts manufacturer out of nearly $400,000 by selling replacement computer parts that he falsely obtained from the company.
Phillip A. Webb, 46, of Brooklyn Park, was sentenced in federal court in Minneapolis to 15 months in prison. He also must pay restitution of nearly $170,000.
According to his plea agreement, reached in November:
Webb, as network services manager for the St. Paul Employees Postal Credit Union, notified Cisco Systems Inc. of Bloomington that various parts in the credit union's computer systems were faulty. These reports prompted Cisco to ship replacement parts and require the credit union to send back the faulty parts.
However, Webb would sell the replacement parts on the Internet, then obtain cheaper second-hand parts to return to Cisco and claim they were the defective parts.
In all, Webb returned to Cisco 55 "defective" parts, 42 of which were actually less expensive replacements.
The fraud was estimated by authorities to total $388,000.
The credit union is based in Woodbury and has outlets in Eagan, Hugo, North St. Paul and West St. Paul.
