Embezzlement

After hearing emotional appeals from a former Columbia village manager, her husband, her son, friends and former village board members, a Howard Circuit Court judge sentenced Anne S. Darrin to 18 months in jail yesterday for embezzling about $65,000 in village funds.Darrin, 50, wept and her husband leapt from his seat and began pacing around the courtroom when Judge Raymond J. Kane Jr. explained the reason for his sentence -- to deter others thinking about stealing money from their employers.

The former Havre de Grace postmaster is awaiting trial on charges that he stole almost $60,000 in money orders from the Havre de Grace post office, federal officials said yesterday.John J. Vitak, 53, is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court Nov. 19 to face trial on one count of embezzlement of postal money orders. Stephen Schenning, first assistant in the United State's Attorney's office, said Vitak is accused of having stolen numerous money orders totaling $58,616 from January 1996 to August 1998.

Anne S. Darrin, a former Columbia village manager, pleaded guilty yesterday to stealing about $65,000 in village funds during a four-year period to pay for personal expenses, ranging from cellular phone bills to aprons for a family-owned restaurant.The embezzlement, which officials put at more than $120,000, focused intense attention on village finances and deepened a rift between the 10 villages and the Columbia Association, which provides much of their funding.The case also highlighted how much the Dorsey's Search Village Board relied on its once-trusted manager.

The International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots has obtained a $1.7 million insurance settlement connected to a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scheme by one of its officials.The settlement, made with National Union Fire Insurance Co. of Pittsburgh, means that the Linthicum Heights-based union has recovered $2.8 million of the $3.6 million it says was stolen over 15 years."This settlement brings closure to a sad and painful chapter in the otherwise proud history of the MM&P," said Timothy Brown, the union's president.

At the maritime union's headquarters on the outskirts of Baltimore, not much was sacred.Prosecutors said in court yesterday that double-billing was rampant. So were kickbacks, gifts, trips, even visits to massage parlors. And when the union wanted to publish copies of its constitution for its 7,000 members, a kickback allegedly was part of the plan.The claims came during opening statements in the federal corruption trial of Harry Seidman, 64, former comptroller of the International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots, a union that represents ship captains and deck officers in seaports in the United States and abroad.

The owner of a now-defunct printing company pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of conspiring with the former comptroller of a Baltimore-based maritime union in an embezzlement scheme that cost the union more than $376,000.Mercury Graphics Inc. owner Ronald Schoop, 60, could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and be fined $250,000 for conspiring with Harry Seidman, 64, former comptroller of the International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots, to misappropriate the union money.

Call her Jane Jones. She was a veteran and valued office manager at a south San Francisco construction subcontracting firm, and she had a problem. Her granddaughter had multiple sclerosis, and the family couldn't cover the bills.So Ms. Jones, whose name has been changed, began embezzling a few thousand dollars a year.It was easy.She created a dummy corporation that ostensibly provided contract construction laborers and added it to a list of similar companies her boss actually used.She wrote checks to the dummy corporation, then deposited them in an account established under its name, and took the money.

The former assistant controller of the state medical society has been charged with embezzling more than a half-million dollars from the organization over a six-year period.Phillip H. Moore, 49, of Lansdowne is charged with stealing $552,816.71 from the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland between 1987 and 1993, prosecutors said yesterday. He is to be arraigned April 10 in Baltimore Circuit Court on one count of felony theft.Mr. Moore is accused of taking the money by writing fraudulent checks on organization accounts, said Gary Honick, a prosecutor in the economic crimes unit of the Baltimore state's attorney's office.

USF&G Corp., stung by a $788,000 jury award in a bad-faith lawsuit in Alabama, has turned around and sued the savings and loan that filed the case against it.The Baltimore insurer last month lost the initial case filed by one of its customers, SouthFirst Bankshares, of Sylacauga, Ala. A jury determined that USF&G had acted in bad faith by failing to pay SouthFirst's claim for embezzlement losses by one of its employees.The jury awarded SouthFirst $688,000 in compensation, and $100,000 in punitive damages.

Iron Workers Local No. 16, which was embroiled several months ago in a $1.4 million embezzlement case, has been taken over by the national, which accused the local of being delinquent in making pension contributions and not handling its finances properly.The International Association of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Iron Workers placed the Baltimore-based local under supervision on Oct. 10, according to a letter sent out to the local's 1,100 members, who work at construction sites in Maryland and surrounding states.

A 45-year-old Baltimore woman was sentenced to seven years in prison yesterday for embezzling more than $181,000 from a Columbia printing company where she worked for 19 years, according to the Howard County state's attorney's office. Margie E. Matthews of the 3400 block of 6th St. in Brooklyn pleaded guilty in March to stealing from Brown and Associates Inc. Matthews worked as a bookkeeper and receptionist for 19 years for the small family-owned firm. In announcing the sentence, Howard County Circuit Judge Lenore R. Gelfman called the crime "insidious," according to prosecutors.

Woman charged, arrested in Westminster embezzlement A Westminster woman who is charged with embezzling about $1 million from the Carroll County bank where she worked was arrested yesterday, according to federal investigators. Karen L. Baer, 46, worked as a teller at Westminster Union Bank, located in the 140 Village Shopping Center, from 1998 to late 2007, according to an affidavit in support of a criminal complaint. After the bank merged with PNC in 2007, an audit revealed $1,050,000 in unaccounted funds, according to court documents.

A former treasurer for a railroad workers union will spend six months in prison and six months on home confinement after pleading guilty to embezzling $45,000 from the organization, a federal judge ruled yesterday in Baltimore. From 1999 through 2004, Walter Fisher served as the secretary-treasurer of the United Transportation Union Local 1949. The union local had about 250 members during that time who were yard masters with CSX, Norfolk Southern, Amtrak, and Conrail in New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The Second Epistle to the Corinthians says that those who give to the church must do so willingly and freely, for "God loves a cheerful giver." Yet even the most generous contributor might turn tight-fisted after discovering that the person entrusted to collect contributions to the church is often also the one who takes them to the bank and files the financial statements. And that often leads to widespread embezzlement. Even in church, temptation and opportunity can lead to shocking levels of sin. Just ask the authors of a recent study by researchers at Villanova University.

A former Carroll County school financial secretary was convicted yesterday of stealing thousands of dollars from a middle school. Linda Sprinkle, 54, of Hanover, Pa., was charged in early 2005 with several counts of felony and misdemeanor theft, as well as one count of misdemeanor embezzlement in the theft of about $20,000 from Hampstead's Shiloh Middle School during the 2003-2004 school year, according to court documents. Yesterday, a Carroll County Circuit Court jury found her guilty on 12 of 14 counts: nine for felony theft, two for misdemeanor theft and one for misdemeanor embezzlement.

A Washington County grand jury has indicted two Hagerstown women on charges that they stole from the county's liquor board, the state prosecutor's office announced yesterday. Cindy Kaye Baer, 40, and Constance Joan Rooke, 73, are both charged with theft over $500, according to a statement from State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh. Rooke, the former office administrator at the Washington County Board of License Commissioners, is also charged with embezzlement. Baer is accused of stealing about $5,000 between May 2004 and July 2005.

A former M&T Bank Corp. branch manager has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Baltimore on charges of embezzling more than $221,000 over several months last summer and fall. The nine-count indictment accuses Natalie Marie Pearson, 29, of Fallston of diverting bank funds and tapping into customer lines of credit for personal use in a scheme that grew more brazen as the months went on. Pearson managed M&T's North Plaza branch in the 8800 block of Walthen Road in Baltimore. Each count of embezzlement carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and/or a $1 million fine plus restitution.

NEWARK, Del. - Victoria Long used to play the ponies every once in a while, but she considered slot machines a game for "idiots." Then a $300 win at the slots at Delaware Park got her started on a gambling addiction that the once-trusted bookkeeper fed with more than $500,000 she stole from her employer. Now 58, she paid for that crime with almost a year behind bars. "I turned out to be the biggest idiot of all," she said. As state after state has opened up to legalized slot machine gambling, cases much like hers have followed - as have jail terms for the offenders and millions of dollars in losses for the victims.

For about 18 months, Bridget Wallace went on a lavish spending spree - including trips to Caesars Atlantic City and a junket to Boca Raton, Fla. She also frequently withdrew money from the bank, either with an ATM card or personal checks, and spent about $200,000 in all on clothes, computers and home expenses. The problem is, the money wasn't hers. Wallace, 44, will be sentenced today for an embezzlement scheme from her former employer at the Johns Hopkins University that caused a major dent in the budget of a national nonprofit organization that researches cancer.

A federal grand jury is investigating the embezzlement of $450,000 from Novavax Inc., allegedly by a former employee who may have had help, sources close to the company said yesterday. The Columbia drug developer revealed in a Nov. 14 Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it had "recently discovered that a former employee had apparently embezzled approximately $450,000 from the company over approximately a 10-month period." The company said in the filing that it had reported the theft to authorities.