Former Town of Cusick Clerk and Council Member Pleads Guilty to Stealing More Than $195,000
Luke Michael Servas worked at the Cusick, Washington Town Hall. Cusick pleaded guilty to embezzling $195,000 as a town clerk and council member of the small municipality. Photo by Town of Cusick, Washington.
Luke Michael Servas, a former public official of the Town of Cusick, Washington, pleaded guilty to bank fraud on Aug. 14, Vanessa R. Waldref, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, announced in a DOJ press release.
Servas was a town clerk and elected council member for the Town of Cusick, a small municipality in Pend Oreille County in Washington’s Eastern District. Another elected city council member selected him to keep accurate records of the city’s financial accounts, the press release details. As the town clerk, Servas “acted as custodian for Cusick’s operating bank account used to receive and safeguard public funds and to make public expenditures on behalf of the town.”
Servas’s position allowed him access to two credit cards to make purchases on the town’s behalf: one card was issued to him, and the other was issued to the elected Mayor of Cusick. Instead of buying things for the town, Servas embezzled over $195,000 of the town’s public funds from October 2022 to March 2023, according to the indictment.
Servas intercepted the mayor’s credit card in the mail and activated it without the mayor’s authorization, prosecutors say. Using both his credit card and the mayor’s card, which he was not authorized to use, as well as checks and interstate wires, Servas transferred money from the Town of Cusick’s State Credit Union Account, which he controlled, into PayPal accounts that he and his wife controlled, the indictment details.
Servas also converted some of the town’s funds to cryptocurrency in an account he controlled with Uphold HQ, INC., a digital money platform with financial services, per the indictment. Servas tried to conceal his involvement in the scheme by using the mayor’s issued credit card account to transfer the funds to his and his wife’s PayPal accounts. This part of the plan made the mayor look guilty of transferring the funds and embezzling the money.
When other public officials started to notice that massive amounts of money were missing from the town’s account, Sevas put his plan into action. He contacted the Pend Oreille County Sheriff’s Office to report the missing funds, according to the indictment. Sevas then told the Sheriff’s Office that the funds had been transferred with the mayor’s credit card, and only the mayor had access to the card. Sevas transferred $174,227 from the mayor’s card, $10,559 from his issued credit card, and $5,966.12 into his cryptocurrency account.
Sevas also wrote a $4,961.08 check to himself from the Town’s bank account and forged the mayor’s signature, as well as the signatures of officials with check writing authority, to make the check look authentic, according to the initial DOJ statement in March 2024.
Servas was indicted on March 19 on 76 counts of wire fraud, bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft, but he has agreed to plead guilty to only one count of bank fraud, according to his plea agreement.
Sevas’ sentencing hearing is set for November 13th, with U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice presiding, his sentencing documents state. Sevas will be escorted from the courtroom to prison if ordered to serve time.
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