Hamden Woman Sentenced to Prison for Embezzling More Than $150,000 from Stamford Business

David B. Fein, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that RENEE BRAGG, 43, of Hamden, was sentenced today by Senior United States District Judge Warren W. Eginton in Bridgeport to six months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for embezzling more than $150,000 from her employer. Judge Eginton also ordered BRAGG to serve the first six months of her supervised release in home confinement.

According to court documents and statements made in court, BRAGG was employed as a payroll specialist at Omega Engineering, Inc. (“Omega”) in Stamford. The employees at Omega submitted weekly written time sheets to payroll specialists, including BRAGG, who assembled a spreadsheet of that information and e-mailed it to an out-of-state payroll company for processing. For several years, BRAGG engaged in a scheme to defraud Omega by entering false hourly information in the payroll spreadsheet that inflated her own hours worked, which resulted in additional pay to her of between $500 and $3,313 per week. In order to conceal the falsified payroll spreadsheets, BRAGG manipulated the composite report of Omega’s total payroll so that it would reflect BRAGG’s normal pay amounts and not include the additional pay.

Between August 2006 and July 2010, BRAGG falsified the payroll spreadsheet for 88 different weeks. During that time, she overpaid herself approximately $150,689 in salary. Omega also paid $11,528 in additional Social Security and Medicare taxes.

Today, Judge Eginton ordered BRAGG to pay restitution in the amount of $162,216.

On June 30, 2011, BRAGG pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud stemming from this scheme.

This matter was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher W. Schmeisser.