SACRAMENTO, CA—Denise Wasicki, 40, of Yuba City, was sentenced today by Chief U.S. District Judge Morrison C. England Jr., to two years and nine months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, for two counts of mail fraud in a scheme to defraud a payroll staffing company out of more than $500,000, United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced.

According to court documents, Wasicki had been employed by a staffing and payroll services agency based in Hanover, Maryland to fill a temporary position at a hospital in Yuba City. When she was terminated by the hospital, Wasicki created a fictional company called Healthcare Quality Management Group (HQMG) with a fictional client that was purportedly a medical office in Yuba City. Posing as “Jackie Stemmons,” Wasicki engaged the staffing agency to provide staff for the medical office and gave them an alias she had used in the past, “Denise Erika Moutrey,” as the person who should be hired. Because Wasicki had been employed by the agency previously, posing as Moutrey, they were able to expedite her hiring and ultimately placed her in an office manager position.

Between July 28, 2009, and May 12, 2010, Wasicki sent time cards and requests for expense reimbursements to the agency for herself and for an assistant office manager at the fictional medical office. As part of the scheme, Wasicki sent the agency fraudulent checks to reimburse it for payroll services it provided, all of which were drawn on fictitious accounts and all of which bounced. As a result of her actions, the agency sustained a loss of approximately $400,000 and spent an additional $100,000 investigating the fraud.

This case is the product of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant United States Attorney André M. Espinosa is prosecuting the case.

Wasicki is scheduled to self-surrender to begin serving her sentence on January 5, 2016.