ST. LOUIS — A bookkeeper from Shrewsbury, Missouri, who admitted to embezzling more than $800,000 from one of her clients and blaming it on one of her company's employees, was sentenced Wednesday to a year and one day in federal prison.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District, Cora Willard, 47, pleaded guilty to one felony count of wire fraud for using Red Hen Business Services, her bookkeeping, payroll and money-management assistance company in Shrewsbury, to steal hundreds of thousands from one of her clients.
Willard told FBI investigators and district prosecutors she embezzled $849,000 from a client who entrusted his bank account and financial records to her between Nov. 29, 2019, and June 10, 2022, according to her April guilty plea agreement.
Rather than making tax and bill payments from his account, she sent the payments to other bank accounts under her control and provided forged balanced sheets to her client to hide her embezzlement scheme, the attorney's office said. Even after the client asked Willard to close his account, she instead submitted nearly 100 unauthorized wire transfers to herself from his bank account. She sent her client false balance sheets to cover up the theft, the attorney's office said.
Once the client noticed large amounts of money missing from his account, he accused Willard of theft and she blamed the discrepancy on one of her company employees, according to her guilty plea agreement.
A U.S. District judge ordered Willard to pay back the money she'd stolen. She had already repaid $100,000 as of Wednesday.
