A North Carolina woman has been sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to embezzling nearly $540,000 from her employer, The Service Company (TSC), pursuant to a scheme by which she took checks payable to TSC and deposited them into another account she controlled. The owner of TSC indicated that the crime had devastated his company and its employees.
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We've posted regularly on the $77 million embezzlement perpetrated at Patterson UTI Energy, Inc., to which former CFO Jody Nelson pled guilty in April 2006 (see post here). The White Collar Crime Prof Blog reported last week that an effort is now underway to recover at least some of the losses caused by Nelson's fraud by auctioning off virtually everything he owned ranging from a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner (stuffed with dollar bills???) to an autographed 2004 Boston Red Sox jersey.
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New Hampshire lawyer Thomas Gage filed suit against former bookkeeper Deborah Woods on charges of allegedly embezzling funds. Gage says he discovered the embezzlement as he was preparing to distribute more than $600,000 left in the will of Grace C. Fogg (who died at the age of 104).
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Judy A. Golliher, the second-ranking financial officer in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), was fired last week after she admitted to embezzlement. More than $100,000 in church funds is missing. Church officials said in a statement issued on Thursday that the case is being turned over to prosecutors. They said insurance and restitution should cover any losses.
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A California-based real estate investor charged today with defrauding clients of $17.5 million faces 103 felony charges including theft, embezzlement and forgery for allegedly phony transactions from 1995 to 2005 .
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A former California city worker was jailed last week on an embezzlement charge after she allegedly used a "lapping" scheme to embezzle $77,000 in city funds. Under the scheme, the defendant took cash from one account's deposit and used a check to be deposited in another account to cover the amount taken.
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The former chief financial officer Timeless Toys, Inc., was sentenced Tuesday in San Jose to 34 months in prison for embezzling $1 million from the company. According to evidence submitted to the court, Lawrence Teodoro used his position as CFO to set up a secret account that he used for outside business ventures and personal expenses that included purchases from "high-end jewelers and clothiers, fancy hotels and spas, boutique wine shops, Hawaiian vacations and escort services."
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A woman accused of embezzling more than $1.5 million from a credit union and buying more than 1,500 items has been sentenced to 27 months in prison. The embezzled funds were used to purchase, among other things, hundreds of pairs of shoes, a $60,000 swimming pool, 58 coats, 16 chain saws, a $25,000 John Deere tractor and more than 3,000 books. The defendant has already begun working to pay back the money she stole by selling her purchases on e-Bay. She's sold 1,000 items so far, bringing in $60,000, according to her attorney.
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The former finance manager and controller of a Sacramento medical group has been sentenced to 17 months in federal prison for embezzling more than $388,000, prosecutors said last Friday. See the full story here.
