Michele Beckwith Acting U.S. Attorney | U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California
Kenneth Gould, a former Clovis-based certified public accountant, has been sentenced to one year in prison for embezzling over $800,000 from a bank. The announcement was made by Acting U.S. Attorney Michele Beckwith.
Court documents reveal that Gould operated a payroll services company in Clovis and committed the fraudulent acts between October 2017 and March 2018. During this period, he initiated several unauthorized electronic payments from one of his clients' accounts to his own company's account at the bank. The bank credited substantial portions of these funds to Gould's account while the transactions were still pending. He then swiftly withdrew the money using cashier’s checks. When the bank discovered there were insufficient funds to complete the transactions, it attempted to reverse them but was unable to recover approximately $830,000.
Gould used the stolen funds to repay a loan he had extended to his client, hoping for eventual repayment. However, the client gambled away the money instead.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Barton.
