A Jefferson City woman will serve time in federal prison for embezzling more than $65,000 from her employer.
Laura Lynn Winge, 48, was sentenced by a federal judge Tuesday to a year and a day without parole, according to the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. The court also ordered her to pay $65,531 in restitution.
Winge pleaded guilty Feb. 21 to one count of bank fraud and one count of theft from an employee benefit plan.
Authorities say she worked as a bookkeeper for Turk's Construction Inc., a residential construction company, and an affiliated company, Pools Unlimited LLC, which builds in-ground swimming pools and spas, from July 2009 until she left employment on March 11, 2016. Company employees participated in an IRA plan that was administered by Winge.
Winge admitted she had withheld $56,876 of the IRA plan deferrals from employees' payroll from Jan. 1, 2013, to March 31, 2016, but never forwarded them to their individual accounts. She also admitted she never forwarded the required employer matching contributions of $38,913 for the same time period. Instead, Winge kept those funds in the companies' operating accounts, and used the employees' deferrals for her own use and the use of another.
Her thefts included writing unauthorized payroll checks to herself, inflating her work hours, unauthorized spending on the credit cards of the companies, health insurance premiums for her dependents, and obtaining services and products from the companies and a related company, Midwest Welding, without paying for them.
The Cole County Sheriff's Department and U.S. Department of Labor were involved in the investigation of the case, which was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lawrence E. Miller.