A Northborough man has been sentenced to a two-year prison term after pleading guilty to embezzling over $360,000 from the non-profit organization he worked for, Venture Community Services, which is dedicated to supporting developmentally disabled community members. Kyriakos Kapiris, also known as Rick Kapiris, was handed down his sentence in federal court in Worcester by U.S. District Court Judge Margaret R. Guzman, with a subsequent five-year period of supervised release and a restitution payment of $371,088.97, as reported by the U.S. Attorney's Office.
During his tenure as Information Technology Manager at VCS from April 2015 to May 2020, Kapiris abused his access to company credit cards for fraudulent purchases from two vendor accounts on the Square web application and one account on Amazon, however, these accounts were falsified fronts he created to funnel the non-profit's funds into his personal Bank of America accounts which he then used for a slew of personal expenses including building a house, a house that has since been forfeited and sold by the government. The defendant’s prior conviction for theft from an earlier employer and his probationary status during the period of this embezzlement added to the gravity of his crime, as U.S. District Court Judge Margaret R. Guzman noted at the sentencing.
The investigation into Kapiris’s scheme was bolstered by cooperative efforts from the Sturbridge and Northborough Police Departments, leading to the charges of wire fraud and money laundering. United States Attorney Leah B. Foley and Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Boston Division, Jodi Cohen, announced the sentencing, with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Lucy Sun and Kristen Noto prosecuting the case.
