Irving woman gets 6 years for embezzling over $800K from IT company
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) — An Irving woman will spend the next six years in prison for stealing over $800,000 from her employer, federal officials announced on Wednesday.
She-Daria Latisha Owens-Ships, 42, of Irving, was sentenced to serve 77 months and ordered to pay $1.1 million - the amount of money she stole plus the amount of extra payroll taxes her fraud caused - in restitution to the company. She pleaded guilty to a charge of wire fraud in April 2022.
Prosecutors said in court that Owens-Sharp admitted that while acting as operations manager for the company between April 2012 and March 2019, she requested paper paychecks for employees in addition to those employees' direct deposit checks. She then altered the paper checks and replaced the employees' names with her own before depositing them into her personal bank account.
Owens-Sharp further admitted that she had told the company's payroll vendor that her wage had been increased from $17 to $25 per hour without authorization. She covered up the lie by making false entries in the company's records that reflected payroll and other expenses for people who had already left the company.
In total, Owens-Sharp admitted, she deposited about 376 altered checks totaling over $818,000. The payroll taxes on the fake checks cost the company an additional $224,000, bringing their total losses to over $1 million.