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QUEENS---A Queens woman who admitted to embezzling more than $800,000 from the Drake Business School in Astoria while working as a supervisor in its account payable department has been sentenced to three to nine years in state prison.
The school has since closed due to bankruptcy.
Angela Sugrim, 30, of 109-33 112th Street in Richmond Hill, Queens, pleaded guilty in October 2006 to second-degree grand larceny and violation of tax law (false returns; personal income and earnings taxes) before Queens Supreme Court Justice Pauline Mullings who imposed Tuesday's indeterminate sentence of three to nine years in prison. As part of her sentence, Sugrim will be making a lump sum restitution payment of $318,703.44 and sign a confession of judgment for the remaining balance of $494,983.56.
"While the school struggled to remain financially solvent, school management was caught completely unaware of the fact that as fast as money came in the front door, it was going out the back door and into the pockets of the defendant", district attorney Richard Brown said. "A once trusted employee, the defendant used her position to unjustly enrich herself. Her conduct represents a gross betrayal of the confidence that school management had in her. In addition to the lengthy prison term that she will serve, she will be required to pay back every cent that she stole."
Brown said that among the defendant's duties as the Drake School's accounts payable supervisor was the writing and distributing of all checks. In pleading guilty, the defendant admitted that, between August 1998 and March 2004 she fraudulently negotiated 203 checks, totaling $813,687, made out on Drake Business School accounts which were then deposited into bank accounts that she controlled. For instance, the account records for R&A Enterprises, LLC, a business account maintained at JP Morgan Chase Bank, for which the defendant is president and sole signatory, indicate deposits over a 16-month period of 71 checks made out on Drake Business School accounts where the purported signers were the school's chief executive officers.
Drake Business School was located at 3203 Steinway Street in Astoria. The school offered degree programs in accounting and information processing, among others. The school ceased operation in June 2004 after filing for bankruptcy and its CEO, David Hart, was shot and disabled. At the time, Hart had been conducting an audit of the school in an attempt to bring the school back into fiscal health. 2-27-07
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© 2007 North
Country Gazette
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