Embezzelment and the small business

Embezzlement cost owners of a Reno furniture company $435,000 over three years time.

"And that's just the ones we could prove," says the owner, who asked not to be named because he and his wife feel foolish for being taken advantage of so easily.

About a year after starting the company, the business, which employs about 30, hired Debbie as bookkeeper-accountant to reconcile bank statements and credit card receipts.

"She had total control," says the owner, "which no one around here has anymore,

I can assure you."

How Debbie did it:

She had at least five credit cards, which she would swipe to run a refund to herself. She threw away the hard copy records of each day's credit card close reports.

"Thank God a credit card company called to report suspicious activity," the owner says. "On a hunch, that investigator ran a check on our accountant's name and it popped up on all these credit cards."

During the ensuing investigation, accountants billed the store $16,000 to unravel the mess. Bank requests yielded hard copies of checks Debbie had written to herself on a monthly basis checks of $2,000 to $4,000 at a time.

"She used Quick Books, which accountants don't like, because it's easy to tamper with," the owner recalls. "She'd delete an entry and rewrite those checks to herself to look like they'd been paid to vendors."

Before hiring Debbie, the couple checked references on the 40-something woman. No problem behavior surfaced. But things changed, they speculate, when their bookkeeper married an illegal alien who had recently lost his job at the company warehouse after the owners discovered his lack of documentation.

They venture the young man, who fathered two children on the woman, then incited her to crime.

The owner decided to prosecute, putting 50 man-hours into documenting his case.

He then pestered police for five months before they agreed to arrest the woman, and says, "Police are reluctant to pursue white collar crime because it's harder to prove."

The woman was arrested, convicted and sentenced to five 10-year terms. However, since she now had two babies in tow, the sentence was suspended, with five years probation.

"She's paying restitution now," he says, "but I'll be long gone before I ever recover the loss."