Susan Seibert Embezzles $545K From Pizza Place To Pay Back Previous Rip-Offs

Susan Seibert embezzled more than half a million dollars over the course of four years from a local pizza restaurant in California. The 49-year-old bookkeeper accepted a plea deal in San Diego’s North County Superior Courthouse on Wednesday that will result in a four year sentence when she returns to court on July 24.

According to a Fox 5 San Diego News report, in the plea deal, Seibert pled guilty to one felony count each of embezzlement and forgery — although she actually admitted to stealing over $545,000 by writing 172 checks to herself from the local Leucadia Pizzeria account.

Apparently, there’s a lot of loose tomato sauce in the pizza business. The high-end pizza restaurant’s owners didn’t notice Susan Seibert’s embezzlements for years. A San Diego Reader report said that she reportedly stole the money between April 2008 and May 2012 by printing most of the checks from a remote computer that wouldn’t show up in the admittedly somewhat disorganized Leucadia Pizzeria accounting system.

In the restaurant’s books, the missing money was showing as going to third party vendors.

However, it was apparently mostly going to pay off Seibert’s debts from a previous embezzlement scheme. In early 2010, she’d agreed to pay back $450,000 plus interest to a previous employer, Breach Security. The San Diego Reader summed up:

“Encinitas Sheriff’s Detective Aaron Dabbs gathered evidence showing that Seibert embezzled money from the pizzerias, and then wrote thirteen checks to her previous employer, thereby making partial payments on that civil judgment.”

The lucrative embezzlement seemed to work for awhile at the popular pizza restaurant which has been in business for about 25 years.

But the robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul scheme came to an inglorious collapse when Leucadia Pizza hired someone else to audit their messy books.

Attorneys for the chain are now seeking repayment for Susan Seibert’s embezzlements by attaching property that they believe she owns.

[pizza image via Wikimedia Commons]