Accountant Sentenced for Stealing $3.5 Million from Employer

BOSTON – A former accountant for an investment advising company was sentenced today in federal court in Boston in connection with a fraud scheme in which he stole more than $3.5 million from his employer.

Gary Tiffany II, 33, of Boston, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Senior Judge Mark L. Wolf to 51 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay restitution of $3,450,304 . In October 2016, he pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and one count of monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity.

Tiffany was responsible for maintaining his employer’s checkbook and making electronic payments on the company’s account to vendors and for office expenses and reimbursements. He was also responsible for downloading monthly bank statements and emailing them to his supervisor to be used to reconcile his employer’s accounts. From about April 2011 through November 2015, Tiffany made wire transfers totaling more than $3 million from his employer’s accounts to his personal accounts, and he forged signatures on about 46 checks payable to himself totaling about $456,000. Tiffany concealed his scheme by making false entries in his employer’s electronic accounting system and altering bank statements he obtained online before forwarding them to his supervisor. Tiffany obtained a total of about $3,557,304 from his employer’s accounts, nearly all of which he used for his own benefit.

Acting United States Attorney William D. Weinreb; Harold H. Shaw, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Boston Office; Shelly Binkowski, Inspector in Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service; and Joel P. Garland, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigations in Boston, made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark J. Balthazard of Weinreb’s Economic Crimes Unit is prosecuted the case.