Weekend Sept 8, 2024
Most fraudsters are finally overwhelmed by a judicial system which finally has them with the evidence. Plea out or its curtains for you says Justice. But for some fraudsters, the criminal justice system is a mere playground. They are not phased buy legal threats, indeed they just return more of their own. Sarah Lingle began working for the SAGE architect firm in 2017. As always she had access to the firm bank accounts and payroll system. It did not take long, she began taking funds form 2189-2022. SAGE acccuses her of stealing one million dollars. In the midst of this she marries ex-convict Chris Lingle 10/16/2020. Here is a story of how rather than admitting to a lavish lifestyle they detailed on Facebook,, the would be criminals claim they are victims of character abuse. Read on.
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An ex-bookkeeper at an Alamo Heights architecture firm is facing criminal charges related to a roughly $1 million embezzlement scheme.
A federal grand jury in San Antonio on Wednesday indicted Sarah Jean Lingle, who worked as a bookkeeper and office manager at the Sage Group for almost five years, on five counts of wire fraud and four counts of filing a false tax return.
Lingle, 39, joins a gallery of other former San Antonio-area bookkeepers who have been arrested or indicted on charges of stealing from their employers.
Her husband, Chris Lingle, 50, had taken to Facebook to chronicle the couple’s glamorous lifestyle, complete with photographs of them in exotic locales and showing off a new Audi automobile, luxury watches, designer shoes and home improvements.
RELATED: How a bookkeeper with a long criminal history keeps getting jobs — and landing in more trouble
Sage Architecture sued the couple in September 2022, alleging they paid for that lifestyle with money stolen from the firm. It said it had discovered $1.6 million in thefts from charges on a company debit card.
In the civil lawsuit filed in state District Court in San Antonio, Sage obtained a default judgment against Chris Lingle when he failed to respond to the allegations against him. But there’s been no activity in the case in over a year. Chris Lingle has not been criminally charged.
Sage officials reported the alleged embezzlement scheme to the Alamo Heights Police Department on Aug. 26, 2022, 10 days after Sarah Lingle resigned. A police official had told the San Antonio Express-News that the case had been turned over to the U.S. Secret Service.
Lingle is scheduled to make her first court appearance next Thursday. She hung up the phone when reached for comment Thursday. A lawyer for Lingle has not yet made an appearance in the case.
The indictment
Lingle started at Sage in 2017, when she was known as Sarah Pardo. She married Chris Lingle in October 2020. She was responsible for managing the firm's financials, including paying bills and handling payroll, and had access to at least one of its bank accounts and a company debit card.
The indictment says Lingle linked the company debit card as a “funding source” for an account she had with mobile payment service company Venmo. She used the money to pay for personal expenses, including for spa treatments, department store purchases, a mortgage loan, a vehicle and insurance.
Lingle was misappropriating money from about 2018 through the last month of her employment, the indictment says.
Credit cards were only one part of the scheme. Lingle would draft payroll checks to employees, forge employee signatures and deposit the checks into her account, the charging documents says. She also would draft payroll checks with an error, then draft new checks for the same period. Instead of destroying the errant checks, the indictment says, she would divert those checks to her account.
In addition, Lingle is charged with falsifying federal income tax returns by underreporting her income for the years 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2022.
If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million on each wire fraud charge. The charges relating to filing a false tax return each carry a penalty of up to three years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
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While a federal public defender tries to hammer out a plea deal for Sarah Lingle, the bookkeeper charged with embezzling $1 million from an Alamo Heights architecture firm, her ex-employer’s efforts to recoup its losses have taken many twists and turns.
The Sage Group has a pending lawsuit against Lingle seeking more than $1.6 million in damages and obtained a $418,817 court judgment against her husband, Christopher “Chris” Lingle, in another case.
The firm also intervened in the couple’s short-lived divorce case — which it suspected might have been a legal maneuver to hide assets — and even sought to thwart Chris Lingle, 50, from collecting anything from his late father’s will.
Most recently, Sage persuaded a judge to toss a lawsuit in which Chris Lingle alleged the firm had defamed him and violated debt collection laws when trying to get him to pay the judgment.
It’s the fallout from the alleged embezzlement the firm accuses Sarah Lingle of committing over a roughly four-year period. Late last year, a grand jury in San Antonio indicted her on five counts of wire fraud and four counts of filing a false federal tax return. Lingle, 40, faces the possibility of up to 32 years in prison if convicted. She had been set to go to trial Aug. 19, but it was postponed to Nov. 4 so negotiations for a possible plea bargain could continue.
Chris Lingle was never criminally charged, but he had taken to Facebook from 2020 to 2022 to document the the couple’s high-flying lifestyle. He showed off photographs of their trips to exotic locales, various high-end luxury watches, designer shoes and a new Audi automobile.
“Ms. Lingle and her husband lived a pretty lavish lifestyle on a $72,000-a-year bookkeeper budget,” San Antonio attorney Greg Scrivener, who represents Sage, said during a recent civil court hearing.
She also used a Sage debit card to pay ordinary expenses, including mortgage payments and home renovation costs, the indictment said.
Sarah Lingle, who pleaded not guilty and is free on an unsecured $30,000 bond, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. William Germany — Chris Lingle’s lawyer — declined an interview.
‘Mr. Lingle’s mistake’
Lingle started working at Sage in 2017 when she was known as Sarah Pardo. She was responsible for managing the firm’s financial matters, including paying bills and handling payroll. She had access to at least one of its bank accounts and a company credit card.
She misappropriated money from about 2018 through July 2022, her last month of employment, according to the indictment. She also is accused of initiating electronic transfers of funds from Sage’s accounts into her own account or business accounts she controlled.
She also would draft payroll checks to employees, forge their signatures and deposit the checks into an account she controlled, the indictment added.
RELATED: How a bookkeeper with a long criminal history keeps getting jobs — and landing in more trouble
In the midst of her employment at Sage, on Oct. 16, 2020, she and Chris Lingle wed.
He’d had his share of scrapes with the law. He was charged with prostitution in 1999 and theft of property under $20,000 and credit card abuse in 2001, among other charges, a court exhibit says.
Yet Germany — Chris Lingle’s lawyer — laid blame for his client’s current predicament on Sara Lingle, according to Scrivener.
“Mr. Germany … stood up in the prior (court) hearing … and said, ‘Mr. Lingle’s mistake was he married the wrong person,’” Scrivener said in court.
Within two months of Sarah Lingle’s departure from Sage in the summer of 2022, it sued her, her husband and her company, Aura Consulting LLC, for more than $1.6 million in damages. The complaint contained screengrabs of Facebook posts by Chris Lingle in 2022 while the couple was in the Cayman Islands. “So this is where you launder the dollars,” a caption with one post said. Another said, “This island has fun activities while you’re doing your laundry.” The posts are under the name “Chris Lingel.”
Scrivener referenced them in court.
“It’s not terribly subtle,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s subject to any interpretation but the obvious one.”
In the lawsuit, Sage said Chris Lingle is “liable for the conduct of Sarah Lingle, as he has conspired in the unlawful and fraudulent schemes to steal money” from the firm.
Sage obtained a temporary injunction to stop the Lingles from dissipating any of the allegedly stolen money. Not long after, a judge entered a default judgment for $418,817 against Chris Lingle after he failed to respond to the allegations.
Responses
In April, more than a year and a half after the judgment, he moved to set it aside and seek a new trial.
In his motion, Chris Lingle cast blame on his wife. He said he didn’t meet her until June 2019 — well after she started at Sage. Yet, he added, Sage accused him of “being a co-conspirator with his wife when the allegations accuse his wife of embezzling or unauthorized uses of debit cards beginning in January of 2018.” All of the proof in the default judgment relates to her alleged actions, he said.
“Mr. Lingle is not under indictment and does not appear to be a target or under investigation in relation to the crimes,” his filing added.
Sage responded that Chris Lingle waited too long to ask for a new trial. On May 7, state District Judge Laura Salinas issued an order denying his request to set aside the judgment.
Sarah Lingle finally answered the lawsuit by denying the allegations.
Sage responded by dismissing the lawsuit against her and Aura, her company, on May 20.
But she wasn’t in the clear. Two days later, Sage filed a new lawsuit against her and Aura containing essentially the same allegations made in the case it had just dismissed. Scrivener, citing legal strategy, declined to elaborate on his reasons for dismissing the claims and refiling them or why he never pursued a default judgment against her.
It’s possible Sage held off serving the complaint as it awaits the outcome of Sarah Lingle’s criminal case. If convicted, she could be ordered to make monetary restitution.
Chris Lingle gave notice on Aug. 9 that he would appeal the judgment and the final order disposing of the case. He has yet to file court papers outlining his arguments.
Fleeting divorce
Another twist was the couple’s short-lived divorce.
Sarah Lingle, without an attorney, sued her husband for divorce three days before Christmas. She said the two had ceased living together Nov. 17 and used boilerplate language that the marriage had become “insupportable because of discord or conflict of personalities.” The couple have no children.
Sarah Lingle expected she and her husband would enter into an agreement for the division of their marital estate.
Less than three weeks later, Sage filed a petition in intervention in the divorce.
“The reason we intervened is we were concerned that this was a sham to hide assets,” Scrivener, Sage’s attorney, said in court. It also was an attempt to collect on its judgment against Chris Lingle.
On May 2, now represented by counsel, Sarah Lingle filed a motion asking the court to strike Sage’s intervention. But that same day she also gave notice that she was dismissing the divorce “without prejudice,” meaning she can refile if she chooses.
Father’s estate
Chris Lingle’s father — Kenneth Lingle, a retired Army colonel — died on Nov. 22, five days after the couple stopped living together. He was 88.
In his will, executed in 1998, Kenneth Lingle directed that two-thirds of his estate should go to his daughter and to his son’s sister, Stephanie Anne Lingle. The remaining amount was set aside for a trust to distribute to Chris Lingle — who was then incarcerated at the state’s Sander Estes Unit in Venus.
Kenneth Lingle said the differing treatment of his two children related in part to his son’s “past criminal activity.”
Distributions to his son were dependent on him avoiding “further criminal conduct,” the will said. If he was convicted of criminal activity, the funds in the trust would immediately be payable to his sister.
Scrivener sent a May 28 letter to the attorney for Stephanie Lingle, executor of her father’s estate, informing him of her brother’s criminal past and the judgment Sage was seeking to collect from him.
“Notwithstanding that (Chris) was not criminally indicted for the theft of Sage’s money as his wife was, he has been convicted of several other crimes since the will’s execution,” Scrivener wrote. His letter cited a half dozen charges, including for prostitution, credit card abuse and theft of property of less than $20,000.
Chris Lingle, though, disclaimed any ownership interest in his father’s estate and assigned it to his sister. The disclaimer and transfer was dated March 28 — the same day as Scrivener’s letter — but it wasn’t filed with the Bexar County Probate Court until July 18.
Defamation suit
Chris Lingle wasn’t finished yet, though. About a month after signing the disclaimer, he sued Sage for defamation and violation of debt collection laws. He sought more than $1 million in damages.
The suit alleged the recording of an abstract of judgment, a summary of the judgment against him, in Bexar County property records caused him to be “debanked,” meaning his bank closed his accounts and returned his money. Three credit card companies also canceled his accounts.
“Going to county records and filing an abstract and telling the whole world you’re a judgment debtor and that you owe money — $418,000 — that you can go collect on it, I think that’s pretty egregious,” Germany, Chris Lingle’s lawyer, said at an Aug. 2 court hearing. The recording defamed him, the suit said.
It also accused Sage of using “fraudulent, deceptive and misleading misrepresentations in its effort to collect a debt for which (he) did not owe and does not owe.” And Sage’s intervention in the divorce case amounted to “harassment and abuse.”
Sage responded that its actions were in the context of litigation and protected by state law — the Texas Citizens Participation Act, also known as the anti-SLAPP law — that protects the First Amendment right to petition. SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation.
“This all stems from a judicial proceeding … that Mr. Lingle voluntarily elected not to participate in,” Scrivener told state District Judge Norma Gonzales. “And now he wants to come in and complain about Sage exercising its rights.”
Scrivener argued at the Aug. 2 court hearing that Chris Lingle’s lawsuit should be dismissed and that he should pay attorneys’ fees and costs.
On Aug. 20, Gonzales granted Sage’s motion to dismiss and awarded it about $13,200 in fees.
When reviewing this case through the lens of an auditor with professional skepticism, there are many indicators of fraudulent activity. First and foremost, Sage didn't have a checks and balances system in place that allowed Sara Lingle to access both the bank accounts and the ability to withdraw monies via payroll. The Sarbanes Oxley Act requires businesses to have checks and balances or internal control systems to avoid this. Also, annual audits were not properly conducted, and I would even dare to hold their auditor for the past half-decade accountable as there is absolutely no way a proper audit was conducted. The auditor is as much a culprit as Sara is. Although, I do have to give it to Sara for remodeling her home as Sage is a construction company that also reconstructs homes. Therefore, a bathroom remodel could very well be a project in the normal scope of business. I would also have to look at the financial statements to see how vehicles were purchased without raising skepticism. If an asset is purchased and we don't have depreciation of that asset recorded, then where did the asset go? If trips were taken on business accounts, where is the list of employees that attended, and where are the minutes showing a record of business conducted on that trip? Also, many duplicate checks were fraudulently written to Sara Lingle. First and foremost, why is Sara writing her own payroll checks for the past five years? This is just the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure. If we dug further I'm sure we'd find suspicion in Aura Consulting, LLC. Who are they? What services or products do they provide to Sage? Where are the invoices? Who set up the contract? If none of this was on file then why are we still using them for four more years? Was Sara the only person who did any type of accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, accounts receivable and payable? No one else reconciled accounts for five years? I find that very hard to believe, and I would be looking further into who's hands were on the accounting records in any way. I think others knew, but the wrong person found out and by that time, it was too big to hide.
Posted by: Erica Acosta | September 15, 2024 at 08:37 PM