Yet another embezzlement story

I don't know why - maybe it's because I have a bit of larceny in my heart - I am fascinated by embezzlers. I've posted about embezzlers so frequently that I should probably have an embezzlement label. There have been too many good ones to get to them all. The Midwest-nice mom who stole from her kids' hockey league and blew most of it on Pandora bracelets and charms. The woman who siphoned off enough from her employer to hire Burt Bachrach to perform at her brother's wedding. The meter-emptiers who filched hundreds of thousands of dollars in quarters out of Boston parking meters. 

When it comes to embezzlers, I'm guessing that many start out harmlessly. They really only want to borrow some money for a bit. They intend to pay it back. But then, when no one notices it's gone, why it's easy enough to stick your hand back in the till. Ditto for those who don't start out so harmlessly, but who start small. And when no one notices, why, back for more. A few bucks here, a few more bucks there. After a while, it all starts to add up.

It's hard for me to imagine anything more career limiting than stealing from your employer. Honestly, I think most people would rather hire a murderer than a thief.

Anyway, the latest from Embezzlement Central is the sad tale of a high-level civilian manager (and I believe former soldier himself) who works - make that worked - for the Army facility in Natick, Massachusetts. Thomas Bouchard's motivation was not so much greed as lust. Which he may have mistaken for love.

In any case, Bouchard met a gal in a bar, and as so often happens when a fellow meets a gal in a bar, he wanted to keep Chantelle Boyd in his life. 

It took a while - the lovebirds met in 2007, and it took until 2014 to come up with the no-show job scheme - but at some point Bouchard engineered a job for his sidekick that paid $65K a year.

To snag her plum job, Bouchard had Boyd falsify her resume to claim that she had experience working with government contracts, and that she had a college degree. In fact, she was a bartender. (Not that a bartender couldn't know how to manage big contracts and/or have a degree. It's just that Boyd didn't.)

To fill the concocted position, Bouchard convinced folks that he needed an assistant, got it approved, and found a way to get Evolution Enterprises, a government contractor he was working with, to hire her on. Her pay was, then, reimbursed by the government. 

It would have been one thing if Boyd had actually done any work:

“Boyd’s position cost the Department of Defense more than $490,000 during her time at Evolution from 2014 to 2018, during which she performed little if any useful function,” the US attorney’s office said in a statement.

Employees like Boyd were required to submit weekly reports about their activities to superiors, according to court papers. “In the almost four years of employment under the EEl contract, BOYD submitted approximately nine (9) weekly updates,‘' prosecutors allege.

She was so unknown to the people she was hired to interact with that a colleague found just 23 e-mails with her name between 2014 and 2016 and thought for two years she no longer worked for the government until being told she was still on the payroll as of 2018, prosecutors said.(Source: Boston Globe)

Three years and just 23 emails? No wonder they got caught!

It was more than just salary and bennies that Boyd enjoyed. Bouchard managed to factor in some perks. He:

...approved thousands more in travel expenses by falsely claiming trips were job-related when the couple instead spent time at Disney World and on the beach during 31 trips to Orlando, federal officials said. 

All this duped us taxpayers another $75K in reimbursement for some Disney fun and frolic.

Boyd is also being charged with making "false declarations" in front of a grand jury - make that a federal grand jury - by stating in sworn testimony that she and Bouchard had chastely stayed in separate rooms when they traveled.

“For most of these trips, however, BOYD traveled with BOUCHARD and stayed with him in the same hotel room. During the trips, BOYD and BOUCHARD visited Disney parks and spent time at the pool and waterslides at the resort hotel — all during business hours,‘' prosecutors wrote in court papers. 

Waterslides during business hours! Well, I never!

The closest I came was on a trip to Minneapolis. We had a few hours between our meeting and our flight, and decided to check out the Mall of America. Which has an indoor roller coaster. Which I went on with my two colleagues. There we were, in our business suits, clutching our briefcases - which for some reason we hadn't left in our rent-a-car - and whee!-ing along with the tourists on the roller coaster. Good times!

Anyway, Bouchard and Boyd have ruined their professional lives. If they had personal lives, other than with each other, those are probably pretty much junked, too. They'll likely face fines. And do time.

Were the trips to Disney worth it? Jeez. The least Boyd could have done was show up for her no-show job. 

Ah, the mind of the embezzler...