A Sudbury bookkeeper has bagged a two-year stint in the slammer after pleading guilty to fleecing more than $180,000 from a Lexington interior design firm where she worked. Christina Iannelli, 51, was handed her sentence by U.S. District Court Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, which also includes a side of three years of supervised release post-prison and an appetizer of $185,120 in restitution and forfeiture, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Turning the page on Iannelli's bookkeeping career, she admitted in December to seven counts of bank fraud, having cooked the books since October 2018. With a creative pen, she drafted fraudulent invoices and helped herself to checks with inflated amounts, using a signature stamp of the firm’s owner to seal the deal. Pleading guilty, the scheme saw her issuing checks to herself, that were unauthorized, beginning around July 2019.
But the crime wasn't a solo affair. Iannelli made sure to cover her tracks with false entries in the firm’s accounting records, displaying a financial fantasy over factual bookkeeping. She pocketed over $30,000 through pumped-up compensation checks alone, and over $150,000 with additional unauthorized checks, as detailed by the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The collar was a team effort, with Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy; Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division; and Lexington Police Chief Michael McLean taking a bow for the announcement. While the Sudbury Police Department was not left out of the loop, it provided valuable assistance in the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney James R. Drabick of the Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit was the frontman for the prosecution.
