Drug addiction, gambling habits often at core of embezzlement cases
rfitzgerald@sunherald.com
March 8, 2014
JOHN FITZHUGH/SUN HERALD Joel Smith, District Attorney for Harrison, Hancock and Stone counties
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The next person arrested on an embezzlement charge could be the woman who sits next to you in church or the businessman who sponsors your child's softball team. Or it could be a public official you helped elect or a person promoted to a position of trust in a government job or non-profit organization.
Embezzlers come from all walks of life and steal for a variety of reasons.
They also apparently think they won't get caught.
The FBI considers embezzlement a white-collar crime generally committed by well-respected persons with a high social status through virture of their jobs. The crime typically is viewed as a non-violent or economic crime in which a person uses deceit to violate the trust placed in them by taking money or property owned by their employer or, in some cases, taxpayers' money.
Simply put, officials say, the higher the position, the harder the fall, and the greater the shock wave throughout a community.
Frequent news reports give the perception that embezzlement is on the rise, particularly among government workers or those appointed to government-related agencies. But officials say that's not the case. They describe it as an ongoing problem of workers giving in to temptation and getting caught.
So what makes workers steal from their employers?
"They do it for a whole host of reasons," said Joel Smith, district attorney of Harrison, Hancock and Stone counties.
"In my years as a prosecutor, it seems the biggest reasons are drug addiction, gambling habits and simple greed. Some are very remorseful. Some are not and some appear to be remorseful because they got caught."
His belief is in line with a national study that lists the top motivators for embezzling: a lavish lifestyle, gambling addiction, financial issues or substance abuse.
A study over a period of five years shows two-thirds of embezzlers stole to have a more lavish lifestyle, not to alleviate financial woes. The study is the 2012 Marquet Report on Embezzlement.
Fifty-eight percent of the embezzlers studied during that period worked in finance and accounting positions, and two-thirds of them were women.
Another report shows workers are more likely to embezzle from department stores, commercial businesses and restaurants than they are from banks, according to the Justice Department's National Incident-Based Reporting System.
However, some of South Mississippi's most high-profile embezzlements have occurred at banks.
A bank official's fall
A case in point is the theft of more than $3.4 million from Hancock Bank's main branch in Ocean Springs. Margaret Migues and Willie Doris Burney stole the money over a period of more than 25 years.
Migues was the bank operations manager. Burney was a teller. They never took off at the same time.
"It started relatively innocently and snowballed," said Tim Holleman, Migues' attorney.
The bank had a different owner when the employees were allowed to get cash and set aside a check that they could retrieve and replace the money on pay day. That practice ended when workers got wind of an audit and scrambled to replace the money they owed, he said.
The women later began taking money from the savings accounts of elderly customers. Migues kept a handwritten ledger of the amounts taken, which prosecutors said helped her come up with an explanation if questions arose.
"She kept the ledger because she had the intention of paying it back," Holleman said, "but it soon became too much and it got out of hand."
The women were busted after a federal investigator noticed $50,000 was missing from his 73-year-old mother's account. The women's friends, relatives and former co-workers wept openly at their sentencing hearings in 2010.
U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. said their betrayal of trust "altered the community greatly." He sentenced both to federal prison for 8½ years and ordered they repay the money. Migues and Burney are due to be released from prison in 2018.
Several other bank embezzlers have been sentenced to prison and ordered to make restitution in the past year.
Ashley Keel confessed an oxycodone addiction clouded her judgment when she stole $80,890 from Hancock Bank's Cedar Lake branch in Biloxi over a four-month period in 2012. She was a vault teller. A judge also ordered drug treatment.
Veronica Morse claimed a shopping addiction clouded her judgment when she embezzled $201,000 from the Bank of Wiggins. The former lead bank teller said she also used the money to provide for her family and take trips.
Two Pearl River County women also admitted embezzling. They stole $117,883.25 from a Picayune bank within 11 months. Both were bank tellers.
Sheriff's fall from grace
The fall of former Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd also involved an indictment that included white-collar crimes. A 31-count indictment unsealed in state court in August included 10 counts each of embezzling and fraud.
Those charges alleged Byrd used county money to pay people already on the payroll to conduct narcotics surveillance or to work at or solicit money for a bass tournament and gospel sing that raised proceeds for the sheriff's benefit bank account.
Those and other charges will be dismissed as part of Byrd's guilty plea to intimidating a witness. He will be sentenced Thursday on the state charge and a federal charge of tampering with a witness. The four-term sheriff was forced to resign in December.
Other arrests
Several former government-related workers also face embezzlement charges from recent arrests. They include former employees of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, the Mississippi Coast Coliseum and Convention Center, the Quitman County tax assessor and the Warren County circuit clerk.
Also, the former executive director of the Stone County Economic Development Partnership and its former secretary were arrested on embezzlement charges last August.
Jay Paul Gumm, an Oklahoma senator from 2002 to 2010, is accused of stealing more than $24,000 from the EDP. Tina Gillespie is accused of stealing more than $300,000.
Both have been indicted. Gumm will be arraigned May 19. Gillespie is set for trial July 28.
The number of recent arrests creates the impression that embezzlements by tax-paid workers are on the rise.
That's not the case, said Brett Kittredge, communications director for the state auditor's office, a watchdog agency that protects tax dollars.
The auditor's office opened 125 cases alleging misused or misappropriated public assets in fiscal year 2013 and 113 cases the year before. Records show the office has opened an average of about 100 cases a year since 2007. The office has recovered more than $19 million in misused, misappropriated or embezzled money since 2008.
http://www.sunherald.com/2014/03/08/5400701/drug-addiction-gambling-habits.html
They also apparently think they won't get caught.
The FBI considers embezzlement a white-collar crime generally committed by well-respected persons with a high social status through virture of their jobs. The crime typically is viewed as a non-violent or economic crime in which a person uses deceit to violate the trust placed in them by taking money or property owned by their employer or, in some cases, taxpayers' money.
Simply put, officials say, the higher the position, the harder the fall, and the greater the shock wave throughout a community.
Frequent news reports give the perception that embezzlement is on the rise, particularly among government workers or those appointed to government-related agencies. But officials say that's not the case. They describe it as an ongoing problem of workers giving in to temptation and getting caught.
So what makes workers steal from their employers?
"They do it for a whole host of reasons," said Joel Smith, district attorney of Harrison, Hancock and Stone counties.
"In my years as a prosecutor, it seems the biggest reasons are drug addiction, gambling habits and simple greed. Some are very remorseful. Some are not and some appear to be remorseful because they got caught."
His belief is in line with a national study that lists the top motivators for embezzling: a lavish lifestyle, gambling addiction, financial issues or substance abuse.
A study over a period of five years shows two-thirds of embezzlers stole to have a more lavish lifestyle, not to alleviate financial woes. The study is the 2012 Marquet Report on Embezzlement.
Fifty-eight percent of the embezzlers studied during that period worked in finance and accounting positions, and two-thirds of them were women.
Another report shows workers are more likely to embezzle from department stores, commercial businesses and restaurants than they are from banks, according to the Justice Department's National Incident-Based Reporting System.
However, some of South Mississippi's most high-profile embezzlements have occurred at banks.
A bank official's fall
A case in point is the theft of more than $3.4 million from Hancock Bank's main branch in Ocean Springs. Margaret Migues and Willie Doris Burney stole the money over a period of more than 25 years.
Migues was the bank operations manager. Burney was a teller. They never took off at the same time.
"It started relatively innocently and snowballed," said Tim Holleman, Migues' attorney.
The bank had a different owner when the employees were allowed to get cash and set aside a check that they could retrieve and replace the money on pay day. That practice ended when workers got wind of an audit and scrambled to replace the money they owed, he said.
The women later began taking money from the savings accounts of elderly customers. Migues kept a handwritten ledger of the amounts taken, which prosecutors said helped her come up with an explanation if questions arose.
"She kept the ledger because she had the intention of paying it back," Holleman said, "but it soon became too much and it got out of hand."
The women were busted after a federal investigator noticed $50,000 was missing from his 73-year-old mother's account. The women's friends, relatives and former co-workers wept openly at their sentencing hearings in 2010.
U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. said their betrayal of trust "altered the community greatly." He sentenced both to federal prison for 8½ years and ordered they repay the money. Migues and Burney are due to be released from prison in 2018.
Several other bank embezzlers have been sentenced to prison and ordered to make restitution in the past year.
Ashley Keel confessed an oxycodone addiction clouded her judgment when she stole $80,890 from Hancock Bank's Cedar Lake branch in Biloxi over a four-month period in 2012. She was a vault teller. A judge also ordered drug treatment.
Veronica Morse claimed a shopping addiction clouded her judgment when she embezzled $201,000 from the Bank of Wiggins. The former lead bank teller said she also used the money to provide for her family and take trips.
Two Pearl River County women also admitted embezzling. They stole $117,883.25 from a Picayune bank within 11 months. Both were bank tellers.
Sheriff's fall from grace
The fall of former Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd also involved an indictment that included white-collar crimes. A 31-count indictment unsealed in state court in August included 10 counts each of embezzling and fraud.
Those charges alleged Byrd used county money to pay people already on the payroll to conduct narcotics surveillance or to work at or solicit money for a bass tournament and gospel sing that raised proceeds for the sheriff's benefit bank account.
Those and other charges will be dismissed as part of Byrd's guilty plea to intimidating a witness. He will be sentenced Thursday on the state charge and a federal charge of tampering with a witness. The four-term sheriff was forced to resign in December.
Other arrests
Several former government-related workers also face embezzlement charges from recent arrests. They include former employees of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, the Mississippi Coast Coliseum and Convention Center, the Quitman County tax assessor and the Warren County circuit clerk.
Also, the former executive director of the Stone County Economic Development Partnership and its former secretary were arrested on embezzlement charges last August.
Jay Paul Gumm, an Oklahoma senator from 2002 to 2010, is accused of stealing more than $24,000 from the EDP. Tina Gillespie is accused of stealing more than $300,000.
Both have been indicted. Gumm will be arraigned May 19. Gillespie is set for trial July 28.
The number of recent arrests creates the impression that embezzlements by tax-paid workers are on the rise.
That's not the case, said Brett Kittredge, communications director for the state auditor's office, a watchdog agency that protects tax dollars.
The auditor's office opened 125 cases alleging misused or misappropriated public assets in fiscal year 2013 and 113 cases the year before. Records show the office has opened an average of about 100 cases a year since 2007. The office has recovered more than $19 million in misused, misappropriated or embezzled money since 2008.
http://www.sunherald.com/2014/03/08/5400701/drug-addiction-gambling-habits.html
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