A Jackson County woman will be serving prison time for defrauding a small Seymour business.
United States Attorney Josh Minkler on Friday announced that 44-year-old Angela Kincaid, of Seymour, was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison by U.S. District Court Chief Judge Richard L. Young.
“Fraud cannot, and will not, be tolerated, especially fraud by company insiders,” said Minkler. “When greed drives a person to abuse a position of trust and defraud his or her employer, especially a small family business, that person will be prosecuted by my office to the fullest extent of the law.”
Minkler said, and the court agreed, that Kincaid used her position as bookkeeper to conceal and perpetrate her theft from her employer, a small family manufacturing business. Just one month after starting as bookkeeper, Minkler says that Kincaid began cutting company checks to herself by forging the company president’s signature. In total, he says that Kincaid forged over 170 checks and stole over $625,000, which she spent largely on personal luxuries, such as second and third homes, cars, vacations, jewelry, NFL football tickets, musical instruments and over 35 firearms.
Minkler says that Kincaid used her position as bookkeeper, and the trust and authority that the company’s managers afforded her, to conceal her fraud. He adds that she made numerous false entries in the company’s accounting ledger that omitted any reference to the checks she cut to herself. In addition, upon learning that the company engaged an outside auditor to review its books and compare them to bank records, Kincaid manipulated copies of the bank records in a way that completely concealed her embezzlement, said Minkler.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office says that when the company’s bank account ran low, due to her theft, she created a false email account and impersonated a company official to authorize the bank to replenish the company’s checking account from its line of credit. Minkler says that, not only did Kincaid steal the company’s cash, but her actions also put it several hundred thousand dollars in debt.
According to Assistant United States Attorney Nick Linder, who prosecuted this case for the government, Kincaid must make full restitution to the victim company, as well as serve three years of supervised release once she is released from prison.