A woman formerly from Pacifica, California has been sentenced to prison for bank fraud and making and subscribing a false tax return. 38-year-old Krisinda Messer of Pope Valley was sentenced to 27 months in prison and was ordered to pay $541,617.52 in restitution. The defendant was indicted by a federal grand jury on May 12, 2015. She was charged with twelve counts of bank fraud, four counts of aggravated identity theft, and three counts of making and subscribing false tax returns.
On May 10, 2017, Messer pleaded guilty to a single count of bank fraud and a single count of making and subscribing a false tax return. Messer admitted that from 2007 until 2011, she was employed as a bookkeeper in San Francisco. Starting in May of 2008 and continuing until August 2011, the defendant created 130 fraudulent checks totaling $436,396.52. 128 of the checks were payable from the defendant’s employer to American Backflow Company, which was owned by a relative of Messer.
American Backflow Company had no business relationship with Messer’s employer. To hide her activities, Messer created a fake company account on QuickBooks and used the fake company to make checks written to American Backflow. This prevented the charges from appearing in the books. The defendant was also sentenced to three years of supervised release. She will begin serving her sentence on May 1, 2018.
Additional details can be found here.