Professor Elam

Other cases

The San Antonio area has had its share of bookkeepers who have landed in the crosshairs of law enforcement.

In August, a federal grand jury indicted Monica Marie Padilla, 46, on 23 counts of wire fraud and seven counts of aggravated identity theft for allegedly stealing $500,000 from two San Antonio companies. She is free on $20,000 unsecured bail pending her trial, which is scheduled for next month.

A judge awarded one of the companies, Superior Fence Co. of San Antonio, $380,000 in compensatory damages for its losses and $1 million in punitive damages in a civil case in April. Padilla didn’t appear to defend herself. 

Alicia Padilla, also known as Alicia Henderson, 61, is serving a 33-month federal prison sentence for embezzling $291,000 from Centro San Antonio,  a public-private nonprofit created to beautify downtown. She pleaded guilty in 2020 to charges of wire fraud and making a false statement on an income tax return. She was sentenced in August 2022.

Daniella Zuniga Vasquez was arrested in October 2022 on charges of stealing more than $150,000 from San Antonio homebuilder Bellaire-Hagen, which does business as Bellaire Homes, after about six months on the job. She confessed to police, Bellaire has said in a civil lawsuit against Vasquez and her husband to recover the money. It obtained default judgments against both after they didn’t answer the complaint. Vasquez, who turns 46 this month, has not been indicted.

Frauds involving bookkeepers and office managers are especially common at small companies — those with fewer than 100 employees — that lack sophisticated internal controls, Andi McNeal, vice president of education at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners in Austin, told the San Antonio Express-News earlier this year.

Guillermo Contreras contributed to this report.