Adel Woman Sentenced to Prison on Fraud and Tax Charges After Embezzling More Than $500,000 from Her Former Employer
Stacey Lynne Gross Wrote Unauthorized Checks to Personal Creditors and Falsified the Company Books to Conceal Her Actions

DES MOINES, IA—Stacey Lynne Gross, age 38, of Adel, Iowa, was sentenced today by United States District Court Judge Ronald E. Longstaff to a sentence of imprisonment of 20 months on federal mail and tax fraud charges, announced United States Attorney Nicholas A. Klinefeldt. Gross was also ordered to pay $518,364.38 in restitution, and ordered to remain on three years of supervised release after her release from prison.

Gross was the office manager for Data Business Equipment, Inc., in Des Moines between late 2007 and early 2011. Her job responsibilities included writing checks from the company account to pay for business expenses. Beginning in early 2008, Gross wrote more than 190 unauthorized checks totaling more than $518,364.38 from the company account for her own personal benefit. She wrote checks to her credit card company, mortgage lender, and to pay for furniture, jewelry, and other personal expenses. Gross admitted to using the United States mails to send some of the fraudulent checks to her creditors and to failing to report the illegal income on her tax returns.

To conceal her embezzlement, Gross made false entries in the company’s books. She would enter the name of a real Data Business Equipment vendor as the “payee” on the company’s general ledgers for checks she had actually written to pay personal debts. Her fraud was discovered in early 2011, and Gross pled guilty to the charges in November 2011.

This case was investigated by the United States Postal Inspection Service, the IRS, Criminal Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Urbandale, Iowa, Police Department. The case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.