A former accounting director who swindled nearly $1 million from a Corona property management firm has been handed a nearly 5-year federal prison sentence. Jenev Boyd, 60, of Corona, was sentenced after pleading guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft related to her near-decade long scheme to embezzle from Encore Property Management.
The United States Attorney's Office reported Boyd was able to covertly siphon funds by resurrecting old client accounts and directing payments to herself. To avoid detection, she doctored bank reports and led her employer and its clients to wrongfully believe these were legitimate operating expenses. The FBI led the investigation into Boyd's embezzlement, which lasted from January 2012 to August 2020.
According to the Justice Department, Boyd was sentenced by United States District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes to 57 months in federal prison, in addition to being ordered to pay $780,810 in restitution. In her role at Encore, Boyd's manipulation of the company's accounts and forgery of signatures, including the company president's, allowed her to mask her theft as routine payments, thus betraying the trust placed in her by her colleagues.
Prosecutors highlighted the impact of Boyd's actions, stating, "[Boyd] abused the trust of her friends and co-workers and convinced them they did not need to look more carefully at reports from banks, which she doctored before providing an accounting to each client she had embezzled from." The fallout of the deception went beyond financial loss, causing employees to depart and leaving those who viewed her as close as family feeling "blindsided and betrayed".
Assistant United States Attorney Sean D. Peterson of the Riverside Branch Office was responsible for the prosecution of the case. Public Information Officer Ciaran McEvoy provided the details of the sentencing, which closed the chapter on a significant instance of white-collar crime within the Inland Empire's business community.
