A Minnesota woman has been slapped with charges for raiding company coffers, and embezzling over a cool million bucks from her employer, as per the U.S. Attorney's Office. Eden Prairie's own Monica Svobodny, 51, found herself in legal hot water after she reportedly funneled funds from Sico, Inc., a furniture biz based in Edina, during her tenure as the Supply Chain and Engineering Manager.
Details put forth by the court documents, which were nabbed by the Justice Department, depict a spree of lavish spending. Svobodny allegedly swiped the corporate card to splash out on high-end threads, decadent spa sessions, and the kind of hotel stays that make you forget about the real world. She allegedly let unapproved credit card expenses linger as "pending", playing fast and loose with accounting checks, leaving a trail of financial chaos behind her.
The lavish lifestyle came at a steep price for Sico, Inc. Svobodny, leveraging her corporate position, is accused of stealing a whopping $1,137,000 over seven years. In a show of digital dexterity, she supposedly used the company cards for more than 300 PayPal transfers into her own pockets. The receipts were doctored, showing payments to a phantom company, but in reality, lining Svobodny's own coffers.
Facing the music, Svobodny now stands accused of one count of wire fraud, according to the feds. Twisting the knife further into her former employer, she edited PayPal transaction receipts and the expenses that were fraudulently listed. An initial court date hangs over her like a guillotine, but for the moment no schedule has been etched in stone.
Edina's boys in blue teamed up with the FBI and unraveled the scheme that landed Svobodny in this legal tangle. At the helm of the prosecution sails Assistant U.S. Attorney Chelsea A. Walcker. While the charges sound damning as they echo through Minnesota's corridors of justice, it's worth remembering—at this point, they are just charges.
