Waycross Woman Pleads Guilty to $2 Million Embezzlement and Identity Theft Scheme

SANDRA L. COOMBS, 39, from Waycross, Georgia pleaded guilty yesterday in federal district court before Chief United States District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood to one count of bank fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft in connection with a scheme to steal over $2 million from her former employer.

United States Attorney Edward J. Tarver said, “This defendant betrayed her employer by using her position of trust to steal over $2 million. Ms. Coombs also stole names and identities of others to commit her fraud. This defendant’s unlawful conduct will send her to federal prison for a lengthy sentence.”

According to the evidence presented during Ms. Coombs’ guilty plea hearing, from 2005 through 2009 Coombs worked as the office manager for Ace Pole Company, a Blackshear business specializing in the production and sale of wooden utility poles. Coombs used her position as office manager to systematically steal over $2 million during a more than four-year time period. To accomplish her scheme, Coombs forged the names of Ace Pole Company officers on over 200 checks written from the company’s Patterson Bank account. To hide the scheme, Coombs falsified company records to make it appear that the forged checks she made payable to herself were instead payments made to vendors of the company. Coombs’ fraudulent activities came to light during an unrelated drug trafficking investigation, when Pierce County law enforcement uncovered the suspicious money transfers in and out of Ms. Coombs’ bank account.

Coombs now faces a 30 year maximum prison sentence for bank fraud, and two-year consecutive prison terms on her aggravated identity theft convictions. A sentencing date has not been set. Coombs was again remanded to U.S. Marshal custody following her guilty plea.

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