An Elkhart woman who admitted to faking employees’ hours at her job and pocketing the wages faces a sentence of nearly 5-1/2 years and a significant financial judgment at a hearing Tuesday.
This story by Jordan Fouts originally appeared in The Elkhart Truth.
Kimberly Kay McGuire, 49, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft. She was charged in February in U.S. District Court in Northern Indiana. Authorities say she faked work hours of 143 former employees as the human resources manager of RC Industries, an Elkhart manufacturer and supplier to the RV industry, between November 2012 and April 2017, and collected between $370,126 and $429,900 in wages.
She directed the wages into accounts she set up and forged employees’ signatures on about 273 paper checks. Authorities believe she tried to avoid detection by logging fake work hours for only a short period of time after an employee left the business, resulting in paychecks worth only a few hundred dollars each, though she used the identities of a few employees for months or years.
The total loss she caused the company was calculated at $585,806, according to Thomas Kirsch II, a U.S. district attorney, in the government’s sentencing recommendation. He calls for a total sentence of 65 months, a money judgement of $370,126 against her and victim restitution amounting to $584,506.
