Accountant David Sarnowski, 50, has been arrested for stealing $1.6 million from a law firm client to support a gambling habit.
Sarnowski is accused of diverting money from the account of the law firm Tanney, Eno, Tanney, Griffith and Ingram into a personal account. He is being held on $200,000 bail, according to the Tampa Tribune.
Sarnowski, a partner with the accounting firm Yarborough, Evans and Sarnowski, in Clearwater, Fla., allegedly diverted the money between June 2004 and Feb. 14, 2008. He has been offering accounting services to the Tanney law firm for over a decade.
Sarnowski aroused suspicions at his accounting firm when he took home his office desktop computer last Valentine’s Day and did not reappear at the firm. Another partner there got in touch with the law firm, which hired an outside accounting firm to investigate. The second accounting firm found irregularities and the law firm alerted the sheriff’s office last July. They found that Sarnowski had been diverting the money while ignoring notices from the Internal Revenue Service that payroll taxes at the law firm were going unpaid.
Sarnowski was allegedly using the money to gamble over the Internet on horse races.
