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TTC After a Loss
Question for the legal ladies (fraud mentioned) - long
So an interesting weekend at work...one of my coworkers also works part time as a travel agent. She's been booking trips for people in our department for years, and up until about 8-10 months ago, everyone's been really happy with their trips. Lately though, there've been a lot of problems...people getting to their vacation site and not getting as nice a room as they'd reserved, hotels being changed at the last minute, and a few situations where the person would get to the airport only to find out they weren't booked on a flight.
I'm not quite sure when all of this came to light (Friday was my first night back after being out for 2 weeks), but apparently she's been scamming everyone. She'd book a vacation, give you all of your confirmations, then cancel the vacation, rebook you with a cheaper package, and pocket the difference. Sometimes she'd basically be running a Ponzi scheme - say if I booked a vacation (which, thank God, I never did) she'd keep the money I gave her, and when the next person booked their vacation, she'd use their money to pay for my trip. Anything she couldn't cover, she'd put on one of the physician's credit cards. That's how everyone figured out what was going on, when he found charges totalling several thousands of dollars. His credit card is the main paper trail of what's been going on. Most people paid her in cash or checks - she's worked there for years, we're all friends, no one had any reason to think, "I should pay with a card to cover my ass in case something goes wrong".
The whole thing infuriates me. Like I said, we're a really tight knit group, it's not like she was stealing from strangers, some of these people are her best friends. The doctor who's card she was charging everything on? She went to his wedding a few months ago, knowing she was stealing from him, knowing she had never booked his honeymoon. One of our aides paid her $2000 for a trip to Disney that never got booked. Disney was her Christmas present for her kids. Now they have no trip, she doesn't have the money to book with someone else (we as a department are taking up a collection to try and send them). I just can't believe someone could steal like that, and still show up and face those people day after day, acting like nothing was going on. She's out on an LOA right now, which was scheduled before everything was figured out, but as far as I've heard, she actually thinks she'll be coming back to work.
Anyway, so my question for the lawyers...I'm assuming a conviction would probably include some prison time? I've heard the number $32,000 floating around, but I don't know if that's what was charged to the credit card or the total amount. And would they even be able to charge her for the people who paid with cash or a check? How much time, if any, do you think she would end up serving?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Question for the legal ladies (fraud mentioned) - long
Yes, her sentence would be likely to include jail time. Theft of anything with a value of over $5,000 is usually a major offense (felony). The amount of time can totally vary. She might be given a plea bargain where she pays a lot of the money back but gets less jail time, or a judge might be totally influenced by stories like the poor Disney family and give her as much as possible. I've seen people serve 5 years for this sort of thing.
As for the people who paid by cash or check, the fraud against them can definitely be included as long as there's some proof. For checks, the people will be able to get records from their banks. For cash, there will probably at least be some written communications between her and the people she defrauded. Plus, there will be their own testimony. She could even plead guilty to all of it, so proof wouldn't be an issue.
This woman sounds like a real piece of work.
It's a certain type of sick person to steal from friends and co-workers.
I used to work with a quiet, friendly guy for about three years, until one day he didn't show up to work. Turns out he had been robbing banks for years and they finally caught up with him. Everyone was shocked, but he never took a penny from our workplace, and he very well could have, he had a good position with the company and had access to credit cards and a chequing account. But he was friends with my boss, so I know he would never betray that trust. That's just a line you don't cross.
It's one thing to steal, but to steal from people you know out of greed, that just sickens me. How does she sleep at night?