Scheme to Steal Nearly $300,000 Results in Guilty Plea

JESSIE MUNCH, age 60, a resident of Slidell, Louisiana, pled guilty in federal court today before United States District Court Judge Sarah S. Vance, to 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, billing, reconciling accounts payable and receivable, collections, and paying vendors and payroll taxes for the company. To perform her duties as a bookkeeper, MUNCH was given signed blank checks to pay bills and payroll taxes. She then started devising ways to siphon money from the company and started stealing company checks and making them payable to herself. Records 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. MUNCH also entered 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. This was 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 not been paid.

The company employed an accountant who would reconcile company 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 the execution of the scheme occurred when she faxed falsified information from New Orleans to the accountant in South Carolina, on January 15, 2005. MUNCH misappropriated these funds to pay off debt, fund her gambling habit, and to pay for living expenses.

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. Sentencing is scheduled for February 10, 2010, at 9:30 a.m.

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.