Tuesday Oct 4 2022
Hi, Professor.
Hope you're doing well.
I'm writing about another bookkeeper/office manager accused of embezzling more than $1.6 million from a San Antonio-area architecture firm. (The employee has not been charged but the firm has filed a lawsuit against her.) These stories about employees stealing from their employer seem to happen sporadically here. Here are the intros from a few that I've written about in the last year:
Ex-Centro employee handed 33 months for fraud
Publication date: 8/6/2022 Page: B001 Section: BEdition: State
Byline: Patrick Danner
A bookkeeper who embezzled $291,000 from Centro San Antonio expressed remorse for her criminal conduct at her sentencing Friday, but that didn't spare her federal prison time.
Alicia Henderson, 60, who now goes by Alicia Padilla, pleaded guilty in 2020 to charges of wire fraud and making a false statement on an income tax return and received concurrent 33-month sentences on each charge. She also must serve three years of supervised release and pay about $356,000 in restitution.
Law firm ex-staffer sentenced in thefts
Publication date: 1/26/2022 Page: B001 Section: HearstEdition: State
Byline: Patrick Danner
In early 2020, after San Antonio's Shelton & Valadez learned its longtime bookkeeper Irene M. Scott had been stealing from the law firm, she confessed but refused to disclose the extent of her embezzlement -- nearly $1.7 million.
The following year, before she was ever charged, Scott found another job and allegedly fraudulently claimed unemployment and obtained weekly payments from the Texas Workforce Commission for about 18 months.
At Scott's sentencing hearing Tuesday, her lawyer asked U.S. District Judge Fred Biery to sentence Scott to 63 months -- two years below the low end of the sentencing guidelines -- because she had accepted responsibility for her crimes while at Shelton & Valadez and had agreed to make restitution to the firm.
Doctor's manager heading to prison; Woman embezzled $345,000 over 8 years after given 'second chance' for earlier crimes
Publication date: 11/9/2021 Page: B007 Section: Edition: State
Byline: Patrick Danner
Not long after Dr. Steven Davis hired Patricia Ann Doucet to work in his dermatology practice in 2004, he learned she had a criminal past. But he decided to overlook it and give her a "second chance."
It was a decision he would come to regret.
Doucet, 74, bilked more than a combined $345,000 from Davis' Dermatology & Laser Center San Antonio and StemBioSys Inc., a biomedical firm he co-founded, from 2012 through early 2020.
On Monday, Senior U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra sentenced Doucet to 46 months in federal prison after she pleaded guilty to 10 counts of wire fraud. She also must serve three years of supervised release and make restitution.
Do you have any thoughts on why this crime seems to happen regularly here? I'm writing today about this latest case.
Thank you.
Patrick Danner
Business writer
San Antonio Express-News
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