Plus, wrongful death lawsuit filed against TV show accountant.
PwC accountant fired after 1,700 upskirting images [Financial News]
The peeping PwC pervert who Adrienne told you guys about last July no longer works for P. Dubs:
An accountant at PwC has been dismissed from the Big Four auditor after he was caught with 1,700 upskirting images on his phone.
Leon Chan, who worked in the accountancy firm’s London office, was fired following an internal disciplinary hearing, a PwC spokesperson told Financial News.
In July, Westminster Magistrates’ Court was told a security guard at Topshop in Oxford Street stopped the 24-year-old on New Year’s Day, after he was caught holding his iPhone and loitering around women.
After handing his phone to the guard, more than 1,700 upskirting images were discovered on it. In July, he pleaded guilty and is due to appear in Southwark Crown Court for sentencing on November 22.
PwC declined to comment on when Chan was dismissed but said this in a statement: “We have clear policies and guidance which include standards of expected behavior. We regularly review and update our policies. When people don’t meet our expected standards of behavior we take it very seriously and deal with it appropriately.”
Palm Desert accountant who embezzled $500k pleads guilty [KESQ]
Traci Kunz, an accountant who embezzled roughly a half-million dollars from her employer, pleaded guilty on Sept. 13 to grand theft and other charges.
Kunz, 45, admitted the theft count, as well as a forgery charge and a sentence-enhancing allegation of perpetrating multiple fraudulent transactions. She is expected to be sentenced on March 20, 2020, and is free on a $10,000 bond.
Authorities said Kunz embezzled the money over a three-year span, beginning in June 2013, while employed as a bookkeeper for Swanson Interiors in Palm Desert, CA.
Kunz, who was fired in 2016, used the company credit card to deposit funds into hers and a former boyfriend’s Paypal and Square accounts. The money would then be routed to Kunz’s bank account, sometimes by means of checks written by her then-boyfriend.
Viacom hit with wrongful death suit over DUI by ex-‘Lights Out With David Spade’ accountant [Deadline]
Entertainment industry accountant Jacob Gralitzer is facing up to a decade behind bars if found guilty in the death of Noah Benardout, who was fatally hit by a car last month that was involved in a collision with a vehicle driven by Gralitzer, who was intoxicated.
Benardout’s parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Sept. 10 against Gralitzer, the producers of Lights Out with David Spade, and Viacom.
According to the lawsuit, Marie and Marc Benardout are blaming the Comedy Central owner, Free 90 Media, and others for Gralitzer allegedly getting drunk on Aug. 1 at the premiere party for Spade’s new show and then getting behind the wheel of his 2018 Infiniti.
Soon after leaving the party for employees of Lights Out with David Spade at LA’s Nightingale Plaza at around 10:30 p.m. that night, Gralitzer’s car smashed into the vehicle of Lawrence Goldsmith as the latter was making a left turn at Melrose and Martel Avenue. “The collision caused the Acura (Goldsmith’s) to careen onto the sidewalk at the southeast corner of the intersection of Melrose and Martel striking Noah Benardout while he was standing on the sidewalk,” the 16-page complaint details, with Goldsmith also named as a defendant.
Accountant lied on oath to protect crime gang torturer [BBC News]
David MacFarlane, an accountant who gave a false alibi for a member of Scotland’s most dangerous crime gang, has been jailed for three years.
MacFarlane, 61, told a sheriff under oath that David Sell was at his home on March 11, 2015. But he was actually busy that day torturing a drug dealer.
Sell was one of nine men jailed for a total of 87 years under Operation Escalade.
During a trial at the High Court in Glasgow, MacFarlane denied deliberately lying, claiming he was “mistaken” about the date of Sell’s visit to his then flat in Thorntonhall, South Lanarkshire.
MacFarlane insisted that the date was correct because it was his sister’s birthday. But he was charged with perjury after Sell admitted his part the crime, after DNA linked him to a pistol used in the attack.
Former Valdosta bookkeeper pleads guilty in $300k business theft [WALB]
Heather Gray, a former bookkeeper of a physical therapy business in Valdosta, GA, pleaded guilty to two counts of bank fraud in federal court on Sept. 11.
Gray began doing financial work for Sutherland Physical Therapy Inc. (SPT) in September 2014 as an employee of Quick Consulting of Adel.
Shortly after beginning work with SPT, in December 2014, Gray began to make automated clearinghouse payments via the internet and mobile access from two bank accounts belonging to SPT without authorization, to pay off credits cards that she and her ex-husband used.
In August 2017, her scheme intensified when she began creating fraudulent checks without authorization, using SPT bank accounts, payable to herself or her ex-husband.
In all, the fraud totaled $321,854.
