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Accountants Behaving Badly: No Jail for PwC Peeper, Guilty Plea for Embezzler, Catholic Church Crook

Plus, no more lavish lifestyle for part-time accountant, and an accountant gets busted for stealing grocery gift cards.

High-flying PwC accountant, 24, who was caught with 1,700 upskirting images after he was spotted behaving suspiciously in Topshop on Oxford Street store is spared jail [Daily Mail]
Leon Chan got a suspended prison sentence.

On Friday he was sentenced to eight months imprisonment, suspended for two years and ordered to complete 100 days of the probation service’s Horizon programme for adult male sex offenders.

Chan must also complete 60 days of a probation-ordered recommended activity requirement and he was made subject to a five year Sexual Harm Prevention Order, prohibiting him from ‘upskirting’.

Leon Chan

Chan, who worked in PwC’s London office, was fired following an internal disciplinary hearing, Financial News reported in September.

Ex-accountant pleads guilty in sizable embezzlement case [Times of Northwest Indiana]
Debra McCall pleaded guilty to charges of bank fraud and tax evasion on Nov. 20 for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of several years as an accountant for a company in Highland, IN.

McCall signed a plea agreement in which she is giving up her right to a trial and is admitting her responsibility for the theft of $708,972.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office will recommend that she receive a sentence of no more than 27 months in prison in return for her guilty plea and her promise to pay restitution.

Judge hands former accountant 18 months in prison for stealing from St. Francis [Newark Advocate]
Amber McCracken, a former St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church accountant, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Nov. 18 after she admitted to stealing more than $172,000 from the parish.

Amber McCracken

McCracken, 39, of Newark, NJ, pleaded guilty to one count each theft, a third-degree felony; and tampering with records, a fourth-degree felony.

Between November 2010 and Aug. 8, 2016, McCracken served as the church’s bookkeeper, and during that time, she used the parish credit card for personal items, including a swimming pool, took cash donations intended for the parish, increased her children’s cafeteria funds without supplying the money, increased her salary by not deducting mandated deductions, and gave herself extra paychecks.

Lincoln part-time accountant stole almost £90k for lavish lifestyle [The Lincolnite]
Elizabeth Cullen, a part-time accountant who stole £87,000 from B Eyre & Son, a car dealership in Tattershall, Lincolnshire, to buy clothes, a new kitchen, health and beauty treatments, and to take vacations, was sentenced to two years and four months in prison.

An investigation revealed that Cullen had been forging the owner’s signature on checks which she used to withdraw cash from the company account. Fraudulent entries were made in the company’s books to cover up what she was doing.

Cullen, 57, pled guilty to two charges of theft between January 2010 and May 2017. She also admitted to money laundering between January 2004 and May 2017.

School district employee accused of stealing wellness gift cards [Patch.com]
Susan Hawes, an accountant technician at Manchester School District in Manchester, NH, turned herself in to authorities on Nov. 15 and was charged with theft by unauthorized taking for allegedly stealing grocery gift cards, which were part of a wellness program, and using them.

Susan Hawes

The school district runs a wellness-fitness challenge for employees where the winner of each challenge receives a $25 gift card to Hannaford Supermarket as a bonus. An inventory of the cards took place earlier this year and an employee noticed that 26 gift cards, with a value of $650, went missing.

Authorities said the majority of the missing cards had been used and the same Hannaford’s loyalty rewards account, registered to Hawes, was associated with all of the purchases.