46°
Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly announced on Tuesday, Feb. 15 the sentencing of Suffolk County resident Patricia Sales, age 46, of Huntington Station, who stole the money while she worked at All About Kids as its director of finance.
Sales pleaded guilty in November 2021 to the crime, officials said.
“After discovering Sales had failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in payroll taxes to the IRS as All About Kids’ director of finance, further investigation revealed the defendant used the company coffers as a personal bank account, issuing herself checks and stealing tens of thousands of dollars in company funds,” Donnelly said.
According to the investigation, as part of her duties, Sales had access to the company’s payroll and accounting system for generating checks, as well as a stamp with the owner’s signature.
In February 2020, employees were looking in Sales' office for copies of bank statements when they discovered several mailed notices from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
The notices indicated that the company had failed to pay payroll taxes to the IRS since at least June 2019. According to the documents, All About Kids owed more than $700,000 in past due taxes and $140,000 in penalties to the IRS.
Sales was fired from her job on Friday, Feb. 7, 2020.
After an extensive review of checks, bank statements, and accounting systems, the company discovered that Sales had created unauthorized checks made out to herself in their accounting system.
After discovering the theft, the company notified the Nassau County District Attorney’s office. In total, the defendant stole $143,680 from All About Kids.
Click here to follow Daily Voice Suffolk and receive free news updates.
