Former Employee Charged with Stealing Nearly $300,000

JESSIE MUNCH, age 60, a resident of Slidell, Louisiana, was charged in a one-count bill of information with wire fraud, announced U.S. Attorney Jim Letten.

According to court documents, from June 2001 through March 2005, MUNCH was employed by a local air conditioning and heating company. Her duties included handling payroll, answering telephones, handling billing, reconciling accounts payable and receivable, collections, paying vendors, as well as paying payroll taxes for the company. When MUNCH was given duties as a bookkeeper, she was given signed blank checks to pay bills and payroll taxes, and she started devising ways to siphon money from the company. She began by stealing company checks and making them payable to herself, in order to convert the company’s money to her own personal use. Documents indicate that MUNCH stole more than $285,000.

When MUNCH made these checks payable to herself, she had to then conceal this in the company books. She accomplished this by placing looseleaf paper over carbon paper, and writing in a vendor’s name, which would then transfer the purported handwritten vendor name onto the company books, thus giving the appearance that the payments went to someone other than herself. She would also enter the check amount into the company books and computer as if she had paid a vendor, or federal payroll taxes, when in fact she had not. These actions were done in an attempt to give the appearance of having the accounts balanced, as the amounts on the books and in the computer would match, even though these vendors or the payroll taxes had really not been paid any money.

The company had an accountant that would reconcile the company’s finances. MUNCH would routinely fax him information relating to payroll taxes that he would need to balance the books. She had to falsify some of this information in order to cover up the scheme. Part of execution of the scheme occurred when she faxed this falsified information from New Orleans to the accountant in South Carolina.

If convicted, MUNCH faces a maximum term of imprisonment of twenty (20) years, a fine of $250,000.00 and three (3) years of supervised release following any term of imprisonment. Letten reiterated that the bill of information is merely a charge and that the guilt of the defendant must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

The case was investigated by the Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The prosecution is being handled by Assistant United States Attorney Jon Maestri.