Former accountant charged with theft

WEST CHESTER » A West Goshen woman has been charged with embezzling almost $ 170,000 from the company she worked for as its accountant, throwing the firm into financial turmoil, according to the owner.

West Chester police arrested Donna Jean Lam on Nov. 10 and charged her with felony counts of theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, receiving stolen property, and forgery.

A criminal complaint states she told investigators that she had made fraudulent cash withdrawals from the company’s bank account, and wrote checks forged with the company owner’s name.

Lam also allegedly used credit cards from the company, Pipe Services Corp. of East Bradford, to make personal purchases she was not authorized to.

“She almost caused my company to go bankrupt,” company owner Megan Beardsley said in an e- mail. “The theft has been all- consuming and devastating to say the least.” The thefts occurred during a period of personal turmoil in her family that left her less attentive than usual at work, she said.

“Donna Lam took total advantage of a very bad situation and acted as my friend while she was embezzling a lot of money from the company,” Beardsley wrote. “She is the worst kind of thief!”

Lam, 61, was arraigned on Tuesday by Senior Magisterial District Judge Daniel Maisano of West Chester and released on unsecured $ 25,000 bail. A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for Nov. 20.

According to a complaint and affidavit filed by West Chester Detective Corporal Scott A. Whiteside, he was contacted about a possible theft by Beardsley in May 2019 about a possible theft by Lam who had worked for the sewer line inspection firm since 2008.

The owner said Lam had control of all the billing and accounting for the company. In February 2019, Beardsley said, she went to check the firm’s account at Santander Bank and discovered various suspicious transactions, including a number of cash withdrawals, each of about $ 1,200.

When she checked the account records more closely, she confi rmed that numerous cash transactions had taken place. After she spoke with personnel at the bank branch in West Chester, she learned that Lam had been making the withdrawals in person.

Beardsley told Whiteside that she confronted Lam about the matter and that the accountant denied any wrongdoing, but subsequently quit her job.

In July 2019, Whiteside was able to get banking records for the company, as well as account information for its credit cards, which Lam had access to. He said that Beardsley confi rmed there had been 83 forged checks cashed between 2016 and 2019, and 150 cash withdrawals on the Santander account, all of which totaled $ 158,694

There had also been 203 fraudulent credit card transactions, worth $ 11,079, for a total alleged theft of $ 169,774.

The amount of the forged checks and fraudulent cash withdrawals started relatively small — $ 15,200 in 2016 — but eventually grew to $ 45,767 in 2017 and $ 83,339 in 2018. They totaled $ 14,000 in 2019 before Beardsley discovered the scheme.

When Beardsley and Whiteside reviewed the bank records in November 2019, it was clear that Beardsley’s name had been forged on the check transaction. Beardsley said that when Whiteside went to the Santander branch to see if employees there could identify Lam as the person who cashed the checks and made the withdrawals. When he showed them a photo of Lam, they identifi ed the person as Megan Beardsley.

Whiteside wrote that when he interviewed Lam with her attorney, Vincent Caputo of West Chester, in October, she admitted making the withdrawals and writing the checks with Beardsley’s signature. She said that she had developed a drug habit in 2016 after the death of her mother, and began stealing money for the company to pay for it. The thefts, she said, grew over time.

“Donna Lam deliberately caused the demise of my business, lifestyle and the so- called friendship I thought we had,” Beardsley wrote. “For what? Her own personal greed. My hardearned money went to her … addiction.

Lam