An Oahu grand jury has indicted a 49-year-old woman on more than 300 counts of computer fraud, identity theft and forgery for allegedly stealing $1.3 million from a landscaping company.
The Honolulu Police Department’s Crime Reduction Unit on Tuesday arrested Tamila Alcoran at her Kaneohe home on a bench warrant on 311 counts of first-degree identity theft, first-degree computer fraud, first-degree theft and other charges.
If convicted, Alcoran could face 20 years in prison without the possibility of probation for the numerous charges. She is being held in lieu of $1 million bail and expected to be arraigned next week.
“This is one of the worst embezzlement cases against a small business that we’ve seen,” Deputy Prosecutor Chris Van Marter said.
He said the prosecutor’s office has seen many embezzlement cases involving managers, accountants and others, but the losses weren’t as large and the schemes not as complex as they are in the case involving Alcoran.
She allegedly stole from Greg Boyer Hawaiian Landscapes and its owner when she started working there in 2008 as an office manager. At the time she was still on probation after being convicted in 2006 for stealing more than $40,000 from a youth soccer organization.
In January 2015 the owner and his wife visited their bank after they discovered discrepancies in their monthly financial statements. While there they compared statements provided by Alcoran to the statements provided by the institution.
“The bank said the statements given by Alcoran were fictitious and not the true statements sent out by the bank,” Van Marter said.
The Boyers immediately reported Alcoran’s fraudulent activity to police, and the company initiated an internal investigation.
Alcoran allegedly instigated numerous, elaborate schemes that include taking out more than a dozen loans that exceeded $300,000 under the name of the company and the owner.
“Alcoran used the owner’s personal information to obtain numerous fraudulent credit cards and thereafter used those cards to obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars in merchandise and services,” the prosecutor’s office said in a news release. “Alcoran then diverted funds from the company bank account to pay off the credit card charges.”
Van Marter said Alcoran spent money on airline tickets, hotel expenses, restaurants and merchandise from retail stores.
Alcoran also accessed the owner’s investment account and sold off his Apple and Facebook stock. She then allegedly opened a debit card account where she deposited tens of thousands of dollars from the sale for her personal use.
She also forged company checks to pay rent on her Kaneohe home.
Alcoran also registered a company called Honu Insulation with the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. Van Marter said the company existed only on paper and that she funneled about $150,000 to this “dummy corporation.”
Van Marter said the owner’s credit was ruined because of the elaborate schemes.
“To this day he can’t even get a credit card,” he added.
The owner is still dealing with civil lawsuits filed by lenders who are trying to recover money from the fraudulent loans that went unpaid.
“He’s incurring additional costs just to try to clean up the mess that she caused,” Van Marter said.
Ten years ago Alcoran was convicted of stealing more than $40,000 from the American Youth Soccer Organization’s Kaneohe region, where she served as a coach and volunteer. The stolen money came from the players’ registration fees paid to buy uniforms and cover operating expenses.
According to a 2006 Honolulu Star-Bulletin story, Alcoran pleaded guilty to forging several checks, including one for $12,000, and depositing them into a checking account of her family’s insulation business. Her attorney had said she took the money to help keep the company afloat when she took over the business after her father had a heart attack.
A judge sentenced her in 2006 to five years’ probation and 300 hours of community service. Her family paid back the money she stole from AYSO before her sentence.