Office manager stole $8.5M and splurged on shopping sprees, plastic surgery, feds say

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Office manager stole $8.5M and splurged on shopping sprees, plastic surgery, feds say
A woman accused of embezzling more than $8.5 million from her employer to bankroll her lavish lifestyle is headed to prison, federal officials say.

The 60-year-old, from St. Petersburg, Florida, was given a six-year sentence Monday, April 8, after pleading guilty to wire fraud late last year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia said in a news release.

McClatchy News reached out to her attorney for comment April 10 and was awaiting a response.

While working as the office manager and executive assistant for a yard management services company in Alpharetta, Georgia, the woman used company credit cards for family trips overseas, plastic surgery and “other exorbitant purchases,” prosecutors said.

Her spending spree included a resort wedding for her daughter that cost upwards of $172,000 and spending more than $600,000 on designer handbags and other items at Saks Fifth Avenue, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

She also spent over $238,000 on tickets to sporting events, including the Kentucky Derby, the Masters and the Stanley Cup finals, according to the release.

Investigators said from 2015 until 2020, the woman charged the purchases to her employer’s credit cards and made them refund her personal credit card for the purchases she made.

She “worked in a position of trust for a company that expected her to honor that trust,” Keri Farley, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta, said in the release.

“Instead, she chose to abuse it and her personal greed not only hurt the company, but everyone who worked for them.”

The woman coded and approved the purchases, sometimes passing them off as legitimate expenses such as newspaper ads, according to prosecutors.

She further hid her scheme by spreading the charges across different job sites, authorities said.

Her six-year sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release, prosecutors said. She was also ordered to pay over $8.6 million in restitution.

Alpharetta is about a 30-mile drive northeast from downtown Atlanta.

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