TOOELE, Utah, Dec. 2, 2020 (Gephardt Daily) — A Tooele woman has been arrested after allegedly embezzling some $95,000 from her employer, a goverment agency.
A probable cause statement from the 3rd District Court of Tooele County said Tracey Leigh Schmidtke, 59, is facing charges of:
- Theft, value equals or exceeds $5,000, a second-degree felony
- Wrongful appropriation, a third-degree felony
- Unlawful use of a financial transaction card, a third-degree felony
- Forgery, a third-degree felony
On Nov. 15, it was found that Schmidtke had allegedly been making fraudulent charges through an unauthorized PayPal account she created in her employers name, the statement said. Schmidtke linked her employer’s checking account to the unauthorized PayPal account, and made numerous fraudulent charges and transactions.
Schmidtke is the office manager for her employer, Stansbury Service Agency, a government agency, and overseas all money transaction and pays all bills for her employer, the statement said.
“Schmidtke admits she has been making these fraudulent charges and transactions and trying covering them up for almost one year with making fraudulent invoices from businesses to cover what she has been charging,” the statement said. “Schmidtke used the PayPal account in her employers name to transfer $33,700 to her personal checking account over the last three months. Schmidtke admitted that she has been transferring money to her personal account from her employers account using PayPal for the last year.”
Schmidtke also admitted to using the PayPal account to pay for various merchandise and food from Amazon, eHarmony, Domino’s, Stitch Fix, Twitch, Urban Outfitters and many others totaling over $40,000 over a three month period, the statement said.
The suspect also allegedly used her employer issued credit card to make $21,184.24 in fraudulent unauthorized purchases from the businesses above and others, between May 29 and Nov. 3. Schmidtke admitted to using the employer’s credit card but could not say on what or how much she bought.
Schmidtke also admitted that she has used her employer’s checking account to transfer money to Oregon to pay for her son’s utility bills. She also allegedly made numerous personal vehicle payments using her employer’s account.
At this time there are only three months’ records of Schmidtke’ transactions and further are pending.
She was transported to Tooele County Jail, where she is being held without bail.
