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Bookkeeper Gets Jail For Embezzling $6.9M

She told people she was a CEO of seven corporations or, alternately, that she and her husband had won the lottery. In any event, she spent like it were true.

Angela Buckborough Platt owned homes and time shares in Rhode Island, Florida and the Bahamas; purchased a 104-acre ranch in Vermont; and bought undeveloped land in Maine. She owned a fleet of luxury cars, show horses, and Hollywood memorabilia. And she was planning a big blowout for her brother's wedding, to feature fireworks and live performances by Burt Bacharach and Riverdance.

But the life-size statue of Al Capone may have been a giveaway that her gains were ill-gotten. For Platt was a $40,000-a-year accountant.

The bookkeeper who embezzled $6.9 million over a period of seven years was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to repay $4.48 million in restitution, plus interest, to her former employer, J&J Materials of Rehoboth, Mass. She pleaded guilty in February to one count of interstate transportation of stolen property.

"I'm very ashamed for what I did," a tearful Platt, 43, of Wyoming, Penn., told Judge William Young in federal court Thursday.

"You found yourself in difficulty, and you found a way to put your hand in the jar," the judge told Platt. "And you kept doing it because people trusted you, and you lied to them over and over and over again."

Hired as a staff accountant by the construction materials company in 1999, Platt was authorized to write checks from company accounts to pay business expenses. Beginning in June 2000, Platt began to write checks from company accounts to herself in amounts ranging from $2,000 to $5,000. Over time the check amounts would increase to nearly $50,000.

Her theft was discovered in June 2006 by another bookkeeper, newly hired to assist her.

According to prosecutors, Platt used the funds on a shopping spree, including real estate, jewelry, firearms and mounted stuffed animals. She owned more than 35 vehicles including luxury and antique cars, trucks, snowmobiles, and a replica of a 1923 Ford Model-T (customized to look like a green goblin). A Halloween and occult enthusiast, she decorated her homes for the holidays with several talking trees modeled after the "Wizard of Oz" characters and a 20-foot-tall smoke-breathing dragon.

And she spread the wealth around, too, throwing lavish parties and purchasing expensive gifts for friends. In the West Haven, Vt., town where they built a ranch house fitted with marble, African hardwoods and a $120,000 hand-carved pool table, the Platts became renowned for walking into a local restaurant and picking up the tab for everyone there.

Her former boss, John Ferreira, said he had to downsize his company and lay off 35 workers because of his losses.

"It's the first time I saw her shed a tear," Platt's former employer, John Ferreira, told reporters after her sentencing. "It's a little late for that now."

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