Pair Of Ex-Law Office Employees Walk Away With 1+ Year Hand-Slap After Being Pinched For Looting $788K+ From Firm's Client Trust Funds, Operating Accounts

From the Office of the U.S. Attorney (Trenton, New Jersey):

• Two former employees of a law firm based in Edison, N.J., were sentenced to prison terms [] for conspiring to defraud their former employer by improperly diverting more than $788,000 from the law firm, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.
  
  Marla Deptula, 46, of Sayreville, N.J., previously pleaded guilty to an information charging her with one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and one count of subscribing to a false tax return. She was sentenced to 20 months in prison. Rose L. Crabbe, 32, of Plainfield, N.J., pleaded guilty to an information charging her with one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. She was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Both defendants previously entered their guilty pleas before U.S. District Judge Peter G. Sheridan, who imposed the sentences [] in Trenton federal court.
  
  According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
  
  Deptula and Crabbe each admitted that between February 2005 and September 2007, they conspired to embezzle, and did, in fact, embezzle, from their former employer, referred to in court documents only as the “Law Firm,” by wrongfully writing checks from the law firm’s trust and business accounts to themselves and their personal creditors to pay for their personal expenses, including credit card bills, real estate taxes and child care expenses. Deptula and Crabbe then mailed some of the checks to their personal creditors. They further admitted to attempting to hide their theft by altering the payee information in the law firm’s accounting records.
  
  Deptula, who had access to the law firm’s bank accounts in order to perform her duties as a secretary in the law firm’s real estate section, used that access to divert more than $788,000 from the attorney trust and business accounts for her and Crabbe’s personal benefit. Deptula received the vast majority of the stolen funds and failed to report any of the income on her federal tax returns.
  
  In addition to the prison terms, Deptula and Crabbe were both sentenced to three years of supervised release. Deptula was ordered to pay $705,093 in restitution and Crabbe was ordered to pay $74,206 in restitution.

For the U.S. Attorney press release, see Former New Jersey Law Firm Employees Who Embezzled More Than $788,000 In Law Firm Funds Sentenced To Prison.