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A federal judge in Connecticut ordered Melissa Corso, 50, of Groton, held pending transfer to New Jersey to face wire fraud charges after the FBI arrested her on Thursday.
Corso and her husband lived in Closter when she worked for a Delaware-based security systems supplier with an office in Ridgefield Park, federal authorities said.
For more than six years, beginning in early 2013, Corso directed customers to send payments owed to the company to a PayPal account linked to her work email, an FBI complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Newark says.
The customers, in turn, sent more than $3.1 million through 1,150 transactions, it says.
Corso siphoned off $540,000 for herself, her husband and an unnamed third individual while passing the rest on to the victim companies, the FBI alleges.
She also used the PayPal account to make purchases delivered to home and work addresses of her and the other two from eBay, Bloomingdale’s, Best Buy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, GrubHub, Forever 21, Louis Vuitton, MAC Cosmetics and Target.
Corso tried to protect the scam by doctoring invoices and other records “based on her role and responsibilities for coordinating the collection of customer payments and applying payments to customer invoices,” the FBI complaint says.
Authorities didn't immediately say whether Corso's husband and former co-worker would be charged and identified or were cooperating with the government.
Acting U.S. Attorney Rachel A. Honig credited special agents of the FBI with the investigation leading to today’s arrest.
Handling the case for the government is Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer S. Kozar of Honig’s Economic Crimes Unit in Newark.
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