Woman Sentenced to 25 Months in Federal Prison on Charge of Defrauding Her East Dubuque, Illinois Employer Out of More Than $1.5 Million
| U.S. Attorney’s Office March 14, 2011 |
ROCKFORD, IL—PATRICK J. FITZGERALD, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and ROBERT D. GRANT, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, today made the following announcement:
Today, in Rockford Federal Court, United States District Judge Frederick J. Kapala sentenced JULIE K. MEYER, 55, of Farley, Iowa, to 25 months in prison, for defrauding her employer, Midwest Irrigation of East Dubuque, Illinois, out of more than $1.5 million.
Midwest Irrigation designs, builds, and irrigates golf courses. Midwest Irrigation owns a separate company, Swan Hills LLC, which owns and operates Swan Hills Golf Course and Westlake Village Golf Course in northern Illinois. From 1995 through 2010, Meyer was employed by Midwest Irrigation as its chief bookkeeper.
Meyer pleaded guilty on December 13, 2010. In pleading guilty, Meyer admitted that from January 2003 through March 2010, she defrauded Midwest Irrigation by writing checks from Midwest Irrigation’s checkbook to pay her personal debts. As stated in the plea agreement, most of these checks were payments on Meyer’s credit cards. Meyer also admitted that a substantial amount of the charges on her credit cards was for gambling debts that she had accumulated with casinos in the Dubuque, Iowa, area.
According to the plea agreement, Meyer used her position as chief bookkeeper to conceal her fraud from Midwest Irrigation. Meyer admitted that she routinely reviewed the statements for Midwest Irrigation’s bank accounts, removed the pages containing the checks she had written on her own behalf, and shredded those pages. Meyer also admitted that she made false entries in the company’s books and records. For example, Meyer admitted that, in order to conceal the missing funds, she created fictitious expenses and falsely inflated legitimate expenses, such as expenses for health insurance, equipment repair, and travel.
In addition to the 25-month prison sentence, Meyer was ordered to serve three years of supervised release following her release from prison. The court ordered Meyer to serve the first year of her supervised release on home detention. The court also ordered Meyer to pay restitution in the amount of $1,585,439.01 to Midwest Irrigation.
The case was investigated by the Rockford Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The East Dubuque, Illinois Police Department assisted the FBI with the investigation. The case was prosecuted in federal court by Assistant United States Attorney SCOTT A. VERSEMAN.
The investigation was conducted under the auspices of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, which includes representatives from a broad range of federal agencies, regulatory authorities, inspectors general, and state and local law enforcement who, working together, bring to bear a powerful array of criminal and civil enforcement resources. The task force is working to improve efforts across the federal executive branch, and with state and local partners, to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes, ensure just and effective punishment for those who perpetrate financial crimes, combat discrimination in the lending and financial markets, and recover proceeds for victims of financial crimes. For more information on the task force, visit: www.StopFraud.gov.