SANTA ANA, California - An Orange County woman who worked at a family-owned computer business in Anaheim pleaded not guilty this afternoon to federal wire fraud charges that allege she sold Apple products that belonged to her employer.
Cecilia L. Litonjua-Moore, 44, of Costa Mesa, was arrested this morning by FBI agents without incident after being charged by a federal grand jury in a three-count indictment filed Wednesday.
Litonjua-Moore was arraigned this afternoon, at which time she entered a not guilty plea and was ordered to stand trial on October 6. The defendant was ordered released on a $50,000 bond.
Litonjua-Moore was an executive assistant at L.A. Computer Company, a family-owned computer store that sold Apple products, until she was dismissed in February 2014. According to the indictment, the company used a point-of-sale system that tracked its inventory, customers and invoices, among other details. Litonjua-Moore had access to this system and the authority to make adjustments to the inventory and to create invoices. She also had authority to access the owner’s computer when he was away, and to use his signature stamp for company business.
Beginning in 2011, Litonjua-Moore allegedly began stealing inventory from the company’s warehouse in order to ship products to customers she found on eBay. The indictment alleges she sold the products at 20 percent to 40 percent below what L.A. Computer paid Apple for the products. The fraud was discovered in late 2013 by the owner of the company, who determined the company’s loss to be $732,517.
To disguise the misappropriation of the Apple products, Litonjua-Moore altered L.A. Computer’s inventory list. In cases where the company did not have products in stock that were necessary for the defendant’s customers on eBay, Litonjua-Moore allegedly created false invoices to order the products and ship them to her customers. She then allegedly deleted the orders from the computer system so the company would not see any outstanding orders, according to the indictment.
The indictment alleges that the defendant used the proceeds from the fraud to fund a gambling habit and to pay for personal expenses, including shopping and meals at restaurants.
An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in court.
If convicted of the three counts in the indictment, Litonjua-Moore faces a statutory maximum sentence of 60 years in federal prison.
The investigation in this case was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which received assistance from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
