Weekend Feb 4 2023
Patrick Danner, reporter at SA Express News has uncovered yet another book keeper fraud.
Meet Monica Marie Padilla
2/3/2023 by Patrick Danner SA Express news
Monica Marie Padilla has a checkered past.
Over the course of two decades, the 45-year-old San Antonio woman has been accused of forging checks, theft and fraudulently possessing someone’s identification.
That hasn’t stopped her from finding work and gaining her bosses’ confidence, though.
Roger and Amber Gilbert, owners of Superior Fence Co. of San Antonio, hired Padilla in June 2021 to handle payroll, pay bills and reconcile company books. They say they gave her access to company checking accounts, credit and debit cards, and bookkeeping records — even their personal banking and financial information.
The married couple is ruing her hire.
The Gilberts allege that Padilla rewarded their trust by a creating a payment scheme to embezzle almost $380,000 during her nine months on the job. Superior Fence is suing to try to recover the allegedly stolen money.
“I don’t know anything about it,” Padilla said when reached by phone last week. “I didn’t get any lawsuit or anything.”
She hung up when asked about her previous scrapes with the law. It’s a history that illustrates how an employee can be accused of stealing, charged in court — even sentenced to jail — and keep landing jobs that provide access to companies’ financial information.
On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio architecture firm alleges ex-bookkeeper embezzled almost $1.7 million
The ever-expanding gallery of bookkeepers and office managers accused of stealing from their employers shows it’s not uncommon. Some of the recent cases:
- Daniella Zuniga Vasquez, who was arrested in October and accused 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 says in a lawsuit against Vasquez and her husband to recover the money. It obtained default judgments against both after they didn’t answer the suit. Vasquez, 45, has not been indicted.
- Sarah Lingle, who Alamo Heights’ Sage Architecture alleges in a September lawsuit stole almost $1.7 million. Lingle, 38, has not answered the lawsuit and has not been charged with any crimes, though the U.S. Secret Service has been investigating.
- Alicia Henderson, also known as Alicia Padilla, 60, is serving a 33-month federal prison sentence for embezzling $291,000 from Centro San Antonio, a public-private nonprofit created to help beautify downtown. She pleaded guilty in 2020 to charges of wire fraud and making a false statement on an income tax return and was sentenced in August.
- Barbara Chalmers, 74, of Lewisville recently pleaded guilty to embezzling at least $29 million from a charitable foundation and several other companies run by a Dallas family. She wrote herself more than 175 checks from the companies’ bank accounts and used more than $25 million to fund a construction company she headed, the Justice Department said. She faces up to 10 years in federal prison.
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