Thursday, June 25, 2009

Former Texas Non-Profit Employee Sentenced In $850K Fraud Scheme

John Phillip Martin, 50, of Austin, Texas, was sentenced to 40 months in prison and ordered to pay $850,000 in restitution for using his position at the Austin branch of the American Cancer Society to defraud the charity in a scheme wherein he would purchase high-end cell phones using its Sprint account and resell them on the Internet. Martin pleaded guilty in April to three counts of wire fraud in the scheme that commenced in or about 2005 and was discovered after his position was eliminated in 2008. Martin reportedly circumvented the charity's controls by altering copies of legitimate Sprint invoices by copying and pasting fake amounts of money for the phones, including BlackBerrys, Palm Treos and Samsung Instincts. Martin was employed by the charity from 1991 to 2008.

Read the story here and here.

Read the DOJ announcement here.

No comments: