FORMER CONTROLLER CHARGED WITH STEALING $2.3 MILLION FROM EMPLOYER
FORMER CONTROLLER CHARGED WITH STEALING $2.3 MILLION FROM EMPLOYER
NEWARK, N.J. – A Middlesex County, New Jersey, man was charged with embezzling over $2.3 million from a New York-based company where he had been the controller since 2001, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger announced today.
Gerard Beauzile, 61, of South Plainfield, New Jersey, is charged by indictment with 10 counts of wire fraud. He appeared by videoconference today before U.S. Magistrate Judge James B. Clark, III, and was released on $200,000 unsecured bond.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
From 2001 through February 2021, Beauzile worked as controller, heading a New York-based company’s accounting department. On a monthly basis, from 2014 through December 2020, Beauzile issued company checks to himself, and deposited those checks into his personal bank account at bank branches in New York, near his employer’s headquarters.
Over the course of the scheme, Beauzile issued approximately 140 checks to himself totaling in excess of $2.3 million, which he used for his own benefit. Beauzile hid his scheme by failing to enter some of the checks into the victim company’s accounting system; causing checks to appear as though they were made payable to vendors when, in fact, Beauzile issued them to himself; changing the vendors invoices to correspond with the accounting of those checks; and falsifying the victim company’s bank account statements.
Each count of wire fraud is punishable by a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a maximum $250,000 fine.
U.S. Attorney Sellinger credited special agents of the FBI, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge George Crouch in Newark, with the investigation leading to the indictment.The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Blake Coppotelli of the Economic Crimes Unit in Newark.
The charges and allegations contained in the indictment are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty.
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Defense counsel: Laura C. Sayler Esq., Assistant Federal Public Defender, Newark
