Maui bookkeeper to plead guilty to stealing $1.3 million from employer
The former bookkeeper of a plant nursery on Maui is expected to admit to embezzling more than $1.3 million to pay off her credit cards and mortgage.
Federal prosecutors filed papers in U.S. District Court Friday charging Thelma Pascua-Suyat with wire fraud. The court has yet to schedule a date for Pascua-Suyat’s guilty plea.
According to the papers, Pascua-Suyat stole $1,313,631 from Ki-Hana Nursery in Kihei from December 2008 to January 2016. She stole $1,120,328 to make 291 payments on another person’s American Express Card, of which Pascua-Suyat was an authorized user, $127,549 to make 112 payments on her and the same individual’s Capital One credit cards and $65,753 to make 33 mortgage payments on her personal residence.
The other person for whom Pascua-Suyat was making credit card payments is not charged with any crimes and is identified in the charging document as “S.S.”
Single credit card payments were as high as $11,572 and the mortgage payments were $2,028.
The government says Pascua-Suyat worked for Ki-Hana from 2004 until her termination on or about January 2016.