Thank God we are not them

08 March 2009
At home with the Ponzis

Ex-bookkeeper is charged with embezzling $9.9 million from her company
Vista, Calif. - A former bookkeeper embezzled $9.9 million, forcing her company to make layoffs as she bought 400 pairs of shoes that she kept in a room-sized closet decorated with a crystal chandelier and a plasma television, authorities claim.

Annette Yeomans, 51, surrendered at the Vista jail on Friday and was booked for investigation of grand theft and embezzlement. She was being held Saturday at the San Diego County jail in lieu of $10 million bail.

It was not immediately clear whether she had an attorney.

Authorities allege that Yeomans embezzled the money from 2001 to 2007 while she was chief financial officer for Quality Woodworks, Inc., a cabinetry business in San Marcos.

She spent at least $240,000 on 400 pairs of shoes, $300,000 on designer clothing and 160 purses valued at $2,000 each, investigators allege. She also remodeled a bedroom into a closet with the chandelier and a 32-inch TV, they said.

"On a weekly basis Yeomans would spend $25,000 on her credit card and then pay off the balance the following Monday with company funds," said Sgt. Mark Varnau of the sheriff's Financial Crimes Unit.

The losses went unnoticed and the company never hired an outside auditor to check the books because she had a trusted position, Varnau said. Meanwhile, he said, the company was forced to lay off workers and restructure operations because of the losses.

An investigation began after American Express notified the company in February 2008 that one of its checks had been used to make a payment on Yeomans' account, Varnau said.

Yeomans was fired last year and agreed to turn over her assets to the company, which has recovered about $2 million from the sale of her home, some cars and other property, Varnau said.

Her husband was a cabinet installer at Quality Woodworks but was not suspected of any crime, Varnau said.


Ah, hubby had no idea? As the shopping bags and delivery trucks blocked the windows and overflowed into the driveway, the lawn, the garage and bathroom, what was hubby thinking? As it became a living nightmare of shredded tissue paper and receipts forcing him to squeeze through towers of shoe boxes falling over the microwave to nuke his nightly turkey pot pie because the missus was cleaning out the malls, what could have been running through his head?

While the years passed on and he ran rosewood through his tablesaw and blew off the sawdust mixed with sweat with his air compressor nozzle, as the missus slunk around the executive suite in Jimmy Choo slingbacks with her Kate Spade signature pushkies, wasn't hubby perhaps at times, burning with a little embarassment? Maybe confused, maybe suspicious there was a hidden sugar daddy creepin' round? Maybe all the time he watched, he was watching for the wrong thing. Maybe he satisfied himself by overvaluing the sweetness of a white collar suite. Maybe he satisfied his silent curiosity with various illegal substances and more than a few double lives, stripclubs and buddies and one night stands and adult video rentals while everyone else was settling down, having kids, having Thanksgivings and Christmases and backyard barbecues and birthday parties...

Meanwhile, this shopaholic female twist on a Bernie Madoff Ponzi had to have been under the influence of perhaps entire fistfuls of benzos, saving the Oxycontin for late nights with the 32' plasma when she'd safely be out of the crosshairs of radar guns in hidden speed traps. Maybe then she'd peel down to her Victoria's Secrets and play baby doll in Sundayschool anklets and 10" maryjane platform spikes. Well, hey, you think hubby joined in the jokes? Maybe hubby hogged the remote.

My friends, is it any wonder that the mass spiritual awakening we so desperately require in order to go straight as a global people and get it right and fix this crazy world gone mad is taking its own sweet time? I don't know ANY people like this and maybe I am naive to imagine you don't either. Let us at this minute fall on our knees and bow our heads in gratitude that somehow, by the supreme miracles of the Beloved and Wise Creator Most Divine and Loving, we are just who we are, doing the best we can, for our people and our Earth in all our dullness, in our simple ways, with kindness and consideration for all living species, every day and every night.

Mostly we can give thanks we are not, never were and never will be, them.