Here are some accountants who were up to no good last week.
Alyssa Milano settles $10 million suit with former accountant [Variety]
Actress Alyssa Milano has settled a legal battle with her former accountant Kenneth Hellie as the case was about to go to trial. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
Milano and her husband, agent David Bugliari, sued Hellie in 2017, alleging that he had forged her signature on checks, failed to pay overdue bills and taxes, and allowed costs to balloon on their home remodeling project.
Hellie filed a countersuit, accusing Milano and Bugliari of ignoring repeated warnings to rein in the remodeling project and stop spending.
The case was set to go to trial on Aug. 19 in the Van Nuys Superior Court in California. However, the parties filed a settlement notice on June 24 and both suits will be dismissed.
3-year suspension upheld for accountant accused of misconduct [New Hampshire Union Leader]
The New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld the three-year suspension of a Maine accountant’s license after the New Hampshire Board of Accountancy found he committed professional misconduct in his former work for the Tri-County Community Action Program.
Ronald Beaulieu, who owned Ron L. Beaulieu & Co., was found to have failed to properly retain records for five years and did improper auditing for the Berlin, NH-based anti-poverty agency. He also was fined $5,000.
The case began with a $1.6 million adjustment to a 2008 audit Beaulieu had done and not adequately explained.
Associate Justice Anna Barbara “Bobbie” Hantz Marconi, who wrote the court’s unanimous opinion that had upheld a Superior Court’s decision on Beaulieu’s license suspension, said, “Beaulieu testified that he stood by the accuracy of the numbers in his audit, but that he had ‘no idea’ as to the reason for the adjustment because he had not ‘looked at those on an individual adjustment-by-adjustment basis.’”
Mountain Top accountant sentenced to seven years of imprisonment for laundering nearly $1.4 million and for failing to report over $800,000 to the IRS [Justice Department]
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that on June 24, U.S. District Court Judge James Munley sentenced Adam Kamor, 44, to seven years of imprisonment and three years of supervised release for committing money laundering and tax evasion.
Kamor worked as a CPA and operated the accounting business Decker Accounting LLC in Wilkes-Barre, PA. From October 2014 to January 2018, Kamor embezzled approximately $1,384,000 from one of his clients, a nonprofit organization, by shifting the funds through a series of accounts under his control. Kamor used the embezzled funds for his own personal benefit, primarily to gamble at the Mohegan Sun Pocono casino.
Kamor also failed to report a total of $804,365.73 in income between tax years 2014 ($110,607.08), 2015 ($315,224.71), and 2016 ($378,533.94). Kamor filed a false Form 1040 for each of those tax years.
The U.S. seized $32,443 of the remaining embezzled funds, which will be returned to the victim of Kamor’s crimes. Munley ordered Kamor to pay additional restitution of $1,353,244.56 to his victim and $241,623 to the IRS to satisfy his outstanding tax obligation.
Accountant, 26, jailed for tricking ex’s new girlfriend into sending naked pics and posting them online [The Sun]
Here’s an update to a story we included in Accountants Behaving Badly on June 3:
A JEALOUS accountant who tricked her ex’s new girlfriend into sending her nude pictures before posting them online has been jailed for four months.
Former convent schoolgirl Blerina Dobla, 26, posed as a male model during internet exchanges with the 23-year-old and deliberately tagged her friends and family in the embarrassing internet posts.
This week she was sentenced at Camberwell Green Magistrates court and a five-year restraining order for the attacks in 2017 over almost a year.
Dobla was arrested at work in February and pleaded guilty in late May to charges of sending a communication of an indecent or offensive nature in January two years ago and sending a shower video to the victim’s friends and family.
Her victim said that the online attacks caused her to quit her job and consider committing suicide.
