The former chief executive officer of DreamLife Financial (a financial services business based in California), Tony Daniloo, was indicted last Thursday in connection with a scheme to defraud homeowners of $7 million. Federal prosecutors say that Daniloo embezzled money from real estate clients by altering client's escrow documents and depositing large amounts of their cash into his personal accounts.
See the full story here.
The White Collar Crime Prof Blog recently shared the story of Annie Donnelly who entered a guilty plea to embezzling $2.3 million from her employer, a medical practice, to buy lottery tickets over the past three years. WCCPB reports that Donnelly was buying upwards of $6,000 worth of tickets a day, but questions why she even bothered when stealing $2.3 million without being noticed is pretty much the same thing as winning the lottery??!! : - )
See the WCCPB post here.
We've been covering the embezzlement case of casino lawyer Richard Davenport; see most recent post here.
Last Thursday, Davenport, who admitted to embezzling $3.1 million from John Ascuaga's Nugget casino over a 12 year period, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with parole possible after serving four.
Before sentencing, Davenport apologized to the Ascuaga family for "a betrayal that cuts deep."
See the full story here.
The former business manager of a school district in Idaho who admitted to embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from district accounts, was sentenced on Monday.
See the full story here.
The Massachusetts Attorney General recently announced that Gerard Battista, a Massachusetts attorney, was indicted on charges that he allegedly stole $1.2 million from clients in connection with legal services performed for them. The indictment stemmed from an investigation by the AG's office after it received complaints alleging that Battista had failed to return to clients large sums of mone with which they had entrusted him.
See the full release here.
A former assistant vice president for Harris Bank in Chicago has been charged with embezzling $14 million from the institution over six years. The money was used to buy property in Chicago and Florida.
See the full story here.
Francis Myers, a former bank vice president at Wachovia Bank, was recently sentenced to three to six years in prison after pleading guilty to embezzling more than $640,000 from the accounts of four elderly customers.
Prosecutors said Myers made more than 200 unauthorized transfers and withdrawals from 18 accounts owned by the four customers between April 2001 and August of last year. The money was used to pay for weddings, college tuition, and a Michigan vacation home, and to finance a failing Philadelphia business and a loan for a mobile home.
See full story here.
United States Attorney Patrick L. Meehan of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania recently announced the filing of an indictment against Dean Henry Smith charging that he embezzled over $733,000 between 2003 and June 9, 2006, while an employee of Wachovia’s Institutional Trust Services Department.
The former accounting manager at the Hoboken Housing Authority, Eric Hurt, pleaded guilty Wednesday to embezzling $111,083 from the agency by writing checks to himself, federal prosecutors said. The defendant admitted he wrote 34 such checks from August 2001 to February 2004, and concealed the theft by falsely reporting that the checks were to various vendors.
See full story here on Newsday.com.
The White Collar Crime Prof Blog has chimed in with a tongue-in-cheek post that observes that the Hurt case makes "[e]mbezzlement . . . sometimes [seem] as easy as opening up a can of beer on a hot summer day." It argues the embezzlement here clearly resulted from a total failure of internal controls.
The United States Attorney for the Western District of New York, recently announced that Lynn R. Lanphear, age 63, of Pittsford, New York, was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $9,441.29 in connection with his guilty plea on June 12, 2006, to embezzlement from a labor union.
See the full release here (PDF).
