United States Attorney Erica H. MacDonald announced the sentencing of THERESA ERNESTINE LINSMEIER, 59, to 27 months in prison for embezzling $540,000 from her former employer. LINSMEIER, who pleaded guilty on June 7, 2018, to one count of wire fraud and one count of filing a false tax return, was sentenced earlier today before Senior Judge Donovan W. Frank in U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minnesota.
According to the defendant’s guilty plea and documents filed in court, from 1998 to 2016, LINSMEIER was employed as a bookkeeper at Farm Mercantile, Inc., a hardware store located in Fairfax, Minn. In her position, LINSMEIER had access to and was an authorized signatory on Farm Mercantile’s bank accounts and had authority to sign and issue checks on behalf of the company. From about 2011 through 2016, LINSMEIER devised a scheme to embezzle more than $500,000 from Farm Mercantile. As part of the scheme, LINSMEIER transferred money to her personal credit cards directly from the bank accounts to which she had access. LINSMEIER attempted to conceal her embezzlement by creating false entries in Farm Mercantile’s general ledger to make it look like the money she stole had actually been used to pay legitimate business expenses. In total, LINSMEIER stole approximately $540,063, which she used for online gambling.
LINSMEIER did not report the money she embezzled from Farm Mercantile on her federal income tax returns. LINSMEIER instead filed tax returns that falsely reported and understated her income. These false returns allowed her to avoid more than $100,000 in federal income taxes from 2012 through 2016.
This case was the result of an investigation conducted by the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation.
Assistant United States Attorney Joseph H. Thompson prosecuted this case.
Defendant Information:
THERESA ERNESTINE LINSMEIER, 59
Fairfax, Minn.
Convicted:
* Wire fraud, 1 count
* Filing a false tax return, 1 count
Sentenced:
* 27 months in prison
* Three years of supervised release
* $540,063 in restitution
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
