Accountant pleads guilty after embezzlement charges

An accounting manager who allegedly embezzled more than $1.5 million from her employer has pleaded guilty to wire fraud.

Stantisha Kemp, 40, was a payroll and accounting manager at an unidentified Atlanta-based company that developed medical technology from 2007 to 2013, according to the Justice Department. Over that six-year period, she allegedly falsified payroll records that were sent to a payroll processing company and telling the payroll processor to directly deposit the deposit funds in her personal bank accounts every month. She told the payroll company that a doctor with the initials Y.H.J. was an employee of her company. She hid the scheme by creating a set of fabricated internal payroll records that made no mention of Y.H.J., who hadn’t worked for her company since early April 2010. Nevertheless, Y.H.J.’s unauthorized salary payments were deposited in Kemp’s bank account each month until February 2013. Sentencing is scheduled for June. Kemp did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Accountants who lie, cheat, and steal threaten the financial solvency of businesses,” said U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak in a statement Wednesday. “Businesses must remain vigilant against fraud — all too often the perpetrator is someone they know.”

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