A fashion-conscious bookkeeper for a Great Neck contracting firm has been charged with grand larceny after allegedly using creative accounting to embezzle hundreds of thousand of dollars from her employer.
Onesta Reyes, 48, of West Babylon, allegedly stole over $316,000 from Chelmsford Contracting Corp. between Jan. 2011 and May 2012 while employed by the company, according to the Nassau County District Attorney’s office.
Reyes allegedly used her control over the company’s payroll system to change her salary from under $50,000 to $239,000 in 2011 to, at least in part, pay for the purchase of clothes.
The DA’s office said Reyes used the money embezzled to augment her personal lifestyle, spending thousands on clothing, shoes and jewelry.
“The notion that this defendant would steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from her employer is bad enough, but to know that she used the money to add to her wardrobe is truly stunning,” said District Attorney Kathleen Rice in a press release. “Now she faces a criminal conviction and years in a prison cell for this abuse of her employer’s trust.”
The DA’s office said Reyes also used alternative methods to defraud her employer, including reimbursing herself for more than $89,000 in fictional expenses and creating a second employee under her name who she paid $22,729 in the last months of 2011.
The company discovered the thefts after an internal audit and reported the missing funds to the DA’s office, according to the press release.
Chelsford Contracting fired Reyes in June.
Reyes was arrested Thursday and arraigned later that afternoon at First District Court in Hempstead. Reyes failed to post her $30,000 in bond and faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
Reyes was also arrested in November on petty larceny charges. That case is still pending.
