A former assistant office manager for a Bellingham business was sentenced to prison following a $1.4 million embezzlement scheme that spanned nearly a decade.
Amy Siniscarco, a 46-year-old from Sedro-Woolley, will spend two years behind bars for wire fraud and filing false tax returns, the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington reported Friday.
Siniscarco served as assistant office manager for a regional hardware retail and leasing business from 2013 to 2022 and was being trained to assume the office manager position.
She employed a variety of methods to steal company funds, the attorney’s office stated, citing records filed in the case.
Siniscarco issued fraudulent company cheques to herself and to organisations where she controlled the financial accounts. She also initiated unauthorised electronic payments to herself, made unauthorised personal purchases on company credit cards, and misappropriated the company’s petty cash.
Siniscarco would forge signatures or convince colleagues with signing authority to sign blank cheques for what appeared to be legitimate purposes. She also altered the company books to make it appear the payments were to legitimate vendors or for tax purposes.
Instead of cancelling credit cards, Siniscarco would use the cards to make unauthorised purchases for herself, including more than 1,800 unauthorised transactions on her Amazon account, the attorney’s office stated.
She would have the credit card statements sent electronically to only her work email address.
Siniscarco used the funds to pay her mortgage, purchase cars, fund her travel, pay her childcare and healthcare, and purchase securities.
“Whilst Siniscarco lived above her means with stolen funds, her coworkers lost out on bonuses and profit sharing,” the attorney’s office wrote.
Over the five years charged in the case, Siniscarco did not report $956,323 in income on her tax returns, leading to a tax loss of $226,826.
“Whilst Ms. Siniscarco was lining her pockets with embezzled funds, the company was forced to endure budget cuts and borrow at high interest to stay afloat. Ms. Siniscarco’s colleagues also lost bonuses and profit sharing,” Assistant United States Attorney Jehiel Baer wrote to the court. “The whole time, Ms. Siniscarco knew she was secretly stealing, placing the company’s financial security and her colleagues’ jobs at risk. When her fraud was finally discovered, Ms. Siniscarco instead placed blame on innocent coworkers, further degrading the trust the company had placed in her.”
The $1.4 million embezzlement case involving Amy Siniscarco illustrates how trusted employees with financial system access and inadequate oversight can systematically drain company resources over extended periods, causing devastating impacts not only to business finances but also to innocent colleagues who lose compensation and face job insecurity whilst the perpetrator maintains a lifestyle funded by theft.
The nine-year duration of Siniscarco’s embezzlement scheme, from 2013 to 2022, demonstrates the persistence and escalation typical of occupational fraud cases. Embezzlers often begin with small thefts, testing whether their actions go undetected, then gradually increase theft amounts and frequency as they gain confidence that internal controls are insufficient to catch them. The extended timeframe also reflects common patterns where trusted employees in financial roles receive minimal scrutiny because management assumes loyalty and honesty rather than implementing robust verification systems.
Siniscarco’s position as assistant office manager being trained to assume full office manager responsibilities placed her in an ideal situation to commit fraud. She possessed detailed knowledge of the company’s financial systems, established relationships with colleagues who trusted her, and increasing authority over financial transactions as she prepared for promotion. This combination of system knowledge, trust, and authority created opportunities to manipulate records and transactions whilst deflecting suspicion.
The variety of methods Siniscarco employed to steal company funds demonstrates sophistication and deliberate exploitation of multiple system vulnerabilities. Issuing fraudulent cheques to herself and to organisations she controlled, initiating unauthorised electronic payments, making personal credit card purchases, and misappropriating petty cash created multiple theft streams that complicated detection by distributing the fraud across different financial channels rather than concentrating it in one easily monitored area.
The tactic of convincing colleagues to sign blank cheques for ostensibly legitimate purposes exploited interpersonal trust and authority dynamics common in workplace environments. Colleagues with signing authority, trusting Siniscarco’s representations and her role as assistant office manager, likely assumed she needed signed blank cheques for routine purposes like paying vendors during busy periods. This manipulation transformed innocent colleagues into unwitting accomplices whose signatures legitimised fraudulent transactions.
