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Vincent Parco Consulting LLC
Private Investigations

When Fraud Is a Family Matter

This entrepreneur hired those she trusted most to help administrate her international business. Some of them helped themselves to the profits as well.

Many frauds require collusion to be successful and when the company is a “family affair,” finding willing participants may be even easier. Regardless of whether the business is a closely-held company or a public corporation whose stock is controlled by a family, however, fraud is still theft that leaves victims in its wake–as Isabelle Wentworth discovered.

Isabelle Wentworth had taken over a failing business in the late 1970’s and had cornered the market in industrial manufacturing. Hardworking, intelligent, and tough, she was now the owner of a successful international business with over 300 employees, Wentworth, Inc. Having spent so many of her earlier years building her business, Ms. Wentworth married relatively late in life an equally hard-working and charming man a few years her junior. Her husband proved to be an excellent administrator of her firm’s overseas sales.

Some years into their marriage, Ms. Wentworth heard rumors that her husband had a mistress. Aware of her h8usband’s eye for the ladies, she had suspected as much; however, she had to question where ge waws getting the funds to pay for such a liaison. One of Ms. Wentworth’s informants had told her that her husband’s other woman had no visible means of support.

Executive Housing

Through some of her own investigative efforts, Ms. Wentworth located the telephone number for a woman names Kristina Tomszyk. Investigators hired by Ms. Wentworth traced the phone number to an apartment in a luxury housing complex. Records identified the owner of the apartment as Amertoch Corporation.

Investigators learned thar Amertoch had financed and renovated the apartment to the rune of $100,000. Amertoch provided Ms. Tomszyk with alternative housing, which it called an “executive residence,” during her apartments renovation.

Permits, deeds, and construction documents listed Ms. Tomszyk’s as the director of Amertoch. Apparently her compensation included furniture, a Mercedes-Benz sedan, and a healthy salary in addition to the luxury residence. To Ms. Wentworth’s astonishment, documents detailing the apartment renovation listed Amertoch as a subsidiary of Wentworth, Inc.

The “Subsidiary”

An audit of Wentworth Inc.’s books revealed the parent company was paying Amertoch “subsidiary” about half a million dollars per year for salary and operating expenses–and a bit extra for the “executive’s” renovations. Ms. Wentworth had worried that her husband was taking money from their marital assets to finance his affair. Worse, he was grabbing the cash hand over fist from her business. In essence her husband had formed a new corporation which had no function whatsoever but was listed on his wife’s company’s books as “management consultants.” It white-washed the half-million dollars per year that he was embezzling from Wentworth, Inc. The high-living nominal executive of Amertoch, Kristina Tomszyk, was actually, Don Huellemeier’s mistress.

The Sting

Searching Amertoch’s public records for confirming evidence that the business was a sham would only tip off the culprits to the investigation, In order to prove the fraud, the investigators targeted Kristina Tomszyk. They visited her office at Amertoch’s corporate headquarters, which turned out to consist of no more than an empty room in commercial building with a professional answering service to ward off unwanted business calls. The they visited Ms. Tomszyk.

Confronted with investigators who knew all the details of her apartment’s financing and fraudulent purpose of “her” company, Ms. Tomszyk denied that she was an employee of Amertoch and stated that she had never set foot in the corporation. She admitted drawing money from an account that funneled money from Ms. Wentworth’s firm for work that was never performed. In all, four trusted staff members of Wentworth, Inc., had helped the husband pull of his fraud, including his cousin and one of the firm’s directors, whom he had paid $50,000.

The Confrontation

Given a choice of either facing criminal prosecution or confessing that he had been embezzling from his wife’s company to support his mistress, the philandering husband confessed and signed divorce agreement paying back penny for penny the money he had taken during his two-year fraud, $1.5 million.

Vincent Parco, private investigator, is a  Certified Fraud Examiner and Certified Forensic Examiner and member of the American Academy of Forensic Examiners. His professional experience includes terms as senior investigator with the Office of Professional Discipline and as senior investigator in charge of the Office of Professional Medical Conduct.

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