A 39-year-old bookkeeper from Trenton has been sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to stealing more than $2 million from two franchise clients of a Middletown-based outdoor lighting company over a five-year span. Alisha King entered guilty pleas to two counts of aggravated theft, two counts of telecommunications fraud, and one count of forgery, and will have no opportunity for early release under the terms of her sentence.
King was the bookkeeper for the Middletown-headquartered outdoor lighting company and provided bookkeeping services to two of its franchisees, based in South Carolina and Tennessee. She is from Trenton, a Butler County city, per the county information document. Prosecutors said the thefts took place from August 22, 2018, through November 30, 2023, according to WLWT.
A Suspicious $2,000 Check Unraveled the Scheme
The scheme surfaced on November 27, 2023, when an employee found a $2,000 check to King drawn on the South Carolina franchise's business account. The business principals had not authorized it, Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell said. Investigators say King used unauthorized checks, online payments and credit card transactions involving both franchisees' accounts; prosecutors put the total loss at $2,025,776.96.
Court documents cited by the station describe $92,350 in unauthorized checks to King and online bill payments from the South Carolina franchise's account. Investigators also say King used the Tennessee franchise's business credit card for personal transactions through PayPal, Venmo and Amazon, with unauthorized purchases and interest totaling $750,727.45. She then used $1,182,699.51 from the South Carolina account to pay down that card balance, according to investigators.
Concert Tickets, a Louis Vuitton Bag, and an Electric Guitar
Investigators said the purchases included personal bills and expenses as well as items such as gift cards, clothing, a handbag, electronics and household goods. The report attributed roughly $396,000 in spending to PayPal, about $88,000 to Venmo and around $198,000 to Amazon, along with approximately $66,000 in credit card interest.
Ohio's Reagan Tokes Law went into effect March 22, 2019, and applies to qualifying first- and second-degree non-life felonies committed on or after that date, according to a Supreme Court of Ohio sentencing reference guide.
What the Reagan Tokes Law Establishes
The Ohio Sixth District Court of Appeals has explained that a sentence under the Reagan Tokes Law includes both a minimum and a maximum prison term, according to State v. Eaton. That general explanation does not, by itself, detail the release-review process in King's case or establish that her reported 10-to-15-year sentence was imposed under the law. The reported sentence terms state that she has no opportunity for early release.
Largest Internal Theft Case in Fornshell's Tenure
Fornshell, who was sworn into office in February 2011, called the case the largest internal theft his office had prosecuted during his tenure. He argued that the scale of the loss warranted imprisonment for a nonviolent offender and said repayment from King's future earnings would be negligible compared with the amount taken.
Fornshell has previously established fraud prevention workshops for officers, board members and volunteers of local non-profit and community organizations, teaching them how to implement internal financial accounting controls to deter employee theft, according to his Federalist Society biography. In July 2012, Fornshell also teamed with the Ohio Attorney General to prosecute a $146,300 theft-in-office and record-tampering case involving a county Department of Human Services supervisor who stole Medicaid funds.
King's case far outstrips typical small-business fraud losses. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners' 2024 Report to the Nations found that small businesses with fewer than 100 employees experience a median loss of $141,000 per occupational fraud incident. King's scheme went undetected for roughly five years before an employee's discovery of a single suspicious check brought it down.
