Manager admits to stealing $516K from Hamilton company
TRENTON » An office manager was robbing a Hamilton engineering company blind for the past five years.
Karen Thompson, 45, of South Brunswick, pleaded guilty Wednesday to stealing $516,715 from Roberts Engineering Group from January 2012 until April 2017, the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office announced in a press release.
The former office manager started working at the company in 2004 and admitted to paying herself unauthorized reimbursements. Thompson committed the half-a-million-dollar theft by manipulating and altering computer records in the company’s accounting and payroll software, prosecutors said.
The disgraced employee pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree theft by deception.
Prosectors are recommending that Thompson spend three years in jail and
pay a restitution of $516,714.77 back to the company. She will be sentenced on Dec. 13.
Roberts Engineering has performed work locally for numerous Mercer County municipalities, including Hightstown, Pennington, Robbinsville, East Windsor, Hamilton, West Windsor, Trenton and Hopewell Borough.
Prosecutors attributed the conviction to the work of Detective Matthew Bagley of the Hamilton Police Division and Criminal Forensic Auditor Kerry Czymek of the New Jersey
Division of Taxation. Assistant Prosecutor Rachel Cook, chief of the prosecutor’s Economic Crime Unit, handled the case, authorities said.