TRENTON, N.J. -A former employee of a Bergen County, New Jersey, watch manufacturer was sentenced today to 12 months in prison for using phony documents and corporate records to defraud her employer out of hundreds of thousands of dollars of watches and watch parts, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.
Lissette Delarosa, 37, of Woodland Park, New Jersey, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp to an information charging her with one count of mail fraud conspiracy. Judge Shipp imposed the sentence today in Trenton federal court.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
Delarosa admitted that from May 2003 through July 2010, she and Cynthia Alvarez, a/k/a “Cynthia Espejo," 51, of Kissimmee, Florida, abused their positions in the watch manufacturer’s Bergen County customer service department to fraudulently obtain merchandise. Alvarez and Delarosa created hundreds of fictitious invoices, records, and customer complaints for watches and watch parts in their employer’s invoicing system and directed the merchandise to be sent to addresses they controlled. The watch manufacturer received no payment related to these invoices and no legitimate basis existed for providing the parts free of charge.
In addition to the prison term, Judge Shipp sentenced Delarosa to three years of supervised release and ordered her to forfeit $126,460.81.
Alvarez pleaded guilty to the same offense and was sentenced on July 8, 2016 to two years of probation.
U.S. Attorney Fishman credited postal inspectors with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, under the direction of Inspector in Charge Maria L. Kelokates, Newark Division, with the investigation.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Svetlana M. Eisenberg of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division in Newark.
Defense counsel: Alan D. Bowman, Esq., Newark, New Jersey
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
