Ms. Christin Guillory, an accounting manager at an Everett-based manufacturing company in Seattle, Washington, allegedly misappropriated more than $2.5 million from her employer by transferring funds to bank accounts Ms. Guillory set up in the names of created companies, and then transferring the funds to her personal bank accounts.
In order to take the monies Ms. Guillory, set up an account to receive payments with the popular payment processor Square and used the name of a commercial shipping company so any payments would appear to be sent to a legitimate company. Between 2014 and 2019, Ms. Guillory paid $1,695,591.00 to the created Square account and then transferred the money to her personal bank accounts. Ms. Guillory allegedly altered company books to conceal the theft.
In 2019, the method to embezzle funds was switched to the use two PayPal accounts. One of the PayPal accounts had a display name similar to her employer and the other used the name of a shipping company with which Ms. Guillory had no affiliation. Continuing through 2021, Ms. Guillory allegedly orchestrated the transfer of $604,000.00 to these PayPal accounts and made false accounting entries to conceal her actions. She then transferred the bulk of the money for her personal use.
After gaining more confidence when the fraud had not been discovered for years, Ms. Guillory allegedly transferred $247,000.00 directly from company bank accounts to her own bank accounts. She also created accounting entries and reused legitimate invoices so that the payments appeared to be for appropriate business purposes. The total theft was approximately $2,536,086.00.
The scheme was detected when a financial institution reported irregularities when reviewing financial reports for Ms. Guillory’s employer. However, with stricter protocols when reviewing company books, her employer could have uncovered the scheme sooner and noticed the irregularities. Unfortunately, the low levels of oversight allowed Ms. Guillory to eventually not feel the need to conceal the fraud over time as the fear of being caught diminished because she was not questioned.
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