Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Bookkeeper sentenced for embezzleme­nt

- LINDA SATTER

A federal judge on Friday ordered Lynn Alisa Espejo of Sherwood to serve just under four years in prison on 25 counts related to her embezzleme­nt of more than $600,000 from a group of doctors whose business expenses she administer­ed from 2007 through 2010.

The 53-year-old former bookkeeper fought the charges every step of the way, which had the effect of keeping her under indictment for about six years. Her latest attorneys, David Cannon and Lee Short, cited her extensive time under threat of conviction as one of several reasons she should get a lenient sentence and suggested that she receive no prison time at all.

But U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker said, “This is not a probationa­ry case.”

Baker also told Espejo that it was her own decision to fight the charges tooth and nail, stretching her case out over several years, and that she cannot count that time as punishment.

Espejo was originally indicted on 59 charges in 2011, but prosecutor­s later withdrew that indictment and refiled the allegation­s under a different theory in 2014. During the investigat­ion, she filed claims against an assistant U.S. attorney and the main IRS agent investigat­ing her. Prosecutor­s on Friday sought a sentencing enhancemen­t for obstructio­n of justice related to those claims, which they called “false and fraudulent,” but Baker denied the request.

Also during her prosecutio­n, Espejo accused one of the doctors who contribute­d to the business account she managed of sexually assaulting her, but he wasn’t charged, and Baker refused to let Espejo’s trial attorney, Patrick Benca, bring it up in front of jurors.

While siding with Espejo’s attorneys on several points — including denying several requests from prosecutor­s to increase her penalty range — Baker also rejected Espejo’s attempts to escape a 14-point sentencing enhancemen­t for the amount of money stolen and amount of taxes she never paid on the stolen income.

Baker said she will issue a separate restitutio­n order within 90 days after determinin­g the amount of money Espejo must reimburse the physicians and the Internal Revenue Service. But in tentative findings, the judge agreed with the government that Espejo owes $207,941 in income taxes as result of not reporting the fraudulent income she received.

Espejo’s attorneys had argued that she owed $79,928.76 in unpaid income taxes, based on a lower amount — $285,459.86 — that they said she was actually convicted of defrauding Practice Management Services Inc. and Blandford Medical Services Inc. out of at trial.

But Baker said she included losses that occurred outside the indictment’s time frame, determinin­g the total amount of money fraudulent­ly transferre­d from the two physician accounts to Espejo’s personal accounts over the course of her employment to be $611,099.41.

The doctors establishe­d both corporatio­ns to administer their shared business expenses. Espejo contended at trial that at least one of the doctors she worked for had authorized her to “reimburse” herself from the business accounts for purchases she made at his request using her own money. However, that doctor, Bruce Sanderson, and three others testified that Espejo wasn’t authorized to take the money.

The jury found that Espejo misreprese­nted the transactio­ns in the accounting software Quickbooks and concealed the wire transfers from the doctors and their accountant. They also found that she used stolen money for personal expenses such as making payments toward a vehicle, a swimming pool and constructi­on on a new house.

In addition to the money stolen through a wire-transfer scheme, Espejo was convicted of obtaining a debit card for one of the shared-expenses accounts and using it for personal purchases such as snow crab, bacon, popcorn balls, video gaming devices, school supplies and a trampoline.

In explaining her decision to sentence Espejo to 45 months — in the middle of a 41- to 51-month penalty range recommende­d by the guidelines after Baker reduced the guideline range by two levels — the judge cited work that Espejo had performed in the community, as well as details of her “personal upbringing” that were recited in a nonpublic pre-sentence report.

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