The Western Pennsylvania Accountant Who Served Prison Sentences For Two Embezzlement Schemes

You might think that there are two kinds of people in the world, the ones whose business operations are small enough that they can manage them with an inexpensive subscription to Intuit QuickBooks, on the one hand, and on the other, the ones who have access to enough money that they can embezzle it without getting caught.  Despite the hoity toity sound of the phrase “white collar crime,” a substantial percentage of financial crime victims and defendants in financial crime cases belong to the 99 percent.  From credit card fraud to check forgery to identity theft, financial crime charges can happen to anyone.  If you are accused of stealing or defrauding people out of money in the context of your work for a small business, contact a Pittsburgh white collar crime lawyer.

Is Wire Fraud and Internet Crime?

In some cases, a certain deceptive action could fit the definition of more than one financial crime.  For example, embezzlement is when someone has given you access to their money and instructed you to use it in certain ways, but you instead use the money to enrich yourself, such as by transferring it to your own bank accounts or using it to make personal purchases without the victim’s consent.  Likewise, when you use a means of communication other than face to face conversation to deceive the victim in an effort to get their money, you could get charged with mail fraud or wire fraud, depending on the means of communication.  If you communicated through written documents sent by postal mail, it is mail fraud.  Likewise, wire fraud is when the communication takes place over a device that theoretically uses wires, be they telephone wires or Internet cables.  Therefore, scam phone calls, phishing emails, and deceptive faxes all count as wire fraud.  The wires involved in this week’s case are presumably the ethernet cables connected to his office computer.

In the News

Walter Tomyczko, 48, is an accountant from Pittsburgh who has gotten in trouble with the law at least twice.  The Department of Justice website does not go into detail about his first conviction, but it appears that, several years ago, he was convicted of financial crimes and served a two-year prison sentence and paid more than $254,000 in restitution to victims.  By the fall of 2018, Tomyczko was out of prison and doing accounting work on an independent contractor basis.  Over the course of a year, he embezzled over $73,000 from one of his clients, a local small business for which he was providing payroll services, by using QuickBooks to make transactions from the client’s account to his own personal bank account and that of one of his family members.  Tomyczko pleaded guilty to wire fraud in November 2021; he could have faced a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.  In April 2022, he received a sentence of 21 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

Contact Gary E. Gerson About Financial Crimes Defense

A financial crimes defense lawyer can help you if you are facing criminal charges for wire fraud, embezzlement, or another financial crime.  Contact the law offices of Gary E. Gerson in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania about your case.

Sources:

justice.gov/usao-wdpa/pr/contracted-accountant-sentenced-prison-second-embezzlement-conviction

justice.gov/usao-wdpa/pr/convicted-embezzler-pleads-guilty-stealing-another-company-where-he-was-doing