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Press Release

Former Manager of Marietta Hair Products Company Sentenced for Embezzling Over $3.3 Million

For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of Georgia

ATLANTA - Veria Fields, a former employee of Bronner Bros., Inc., a hair care products company in Marietta, Georgia, has been sentenced to serve two years and four months in federal prison on charges of mail fraud relating to a theft from her former employer.

“Small businesses depend on their finance and accounting personnel to safeguard the financial health of the company,” said U.S. Attorney John Horn. “Instead, Fields violated the company’s trust by stealing millions of dollars for herself.”

“Today’s sentencing of Ms. Fields to federal prison will provide her with significant time to reflect on her ill-conceived greed driven theft scheme that diverted over three million dollars from her company to her own bank account.  The FBI will continue to dedicate its investigative resources toward those individuals engaged in such unbridled and damaging white collar based criminal schemes as seen here,” said J. Britt Johnson, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Atlanta Field Office.

According to U.S. Attorney Horn, the charges and other information presented in court:  Fields was the Accounts Receivable Manager for Bronner Bros. Inc., a wholesaler of African-American hair care products headquartered in Marietta, Georgia.  Fields also informally performed customer service functions for the company. 

From 2006 through 2010, Fields embezzled over $3.3 million from Bronner Bros. by offering customers unauthorized discounts of five to15 percent in exchange for customers making account payments to her in cash.  Rather than applying the discounted payments to the customers’ accounts as the customers expected, Fields instead pocketed the cash for herself.  To conceal the unauthorized discounts and the thefts, Fields used her position as the company’s Accounts Receivable Manager to allocate portions of the payments from other Bronner Bros. customers to cover the shortfalls she created.  She also wrote off portions of the bills owed by the customers. 

Veria Fields, 54, of Atlanta, Georgia, has been sentenced to two years, four months in federal prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and to pay restitution of $3,330,828.02.  Fields was convicted of these charges on November 20, 2015, after she pleaded guilty.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Assistant United States Attorney Bernita B. Malloy prosecuted this case.

For further information please contact the U.S. Attorney’s Public Affairs Office at USAGAN.PressEmails@usdoj.gov or (404) 581-6016.  The Internet address for the home page for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia Atlanta Division is http://www.justice.gov/usao/gan/.

Updated February 22, 2016

Topic
Financial Fraud