A former employee pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to embezzling nearly $150,000 from Eldon Drug Company in Eldon.
Katherine Cebuhar, 41, of Olean, waived her right to a grand jury and pleaded guilty to four counts of wire fraud.
Authorities said Cebuhar worked as the office manager for MLX-RX, LLC d/b/a Eldon Drug Company, a pharmacy in Eldon, from April 2014 until her termination on March 1, 2017. By pleading guilty, Cebuhar admitted she conducted four fraudulent embezzlement schemes while employed at Eldon Drug Company, resulting in a total loss to her employer of $148,782.
Cebuhar embezzled $125,444 of the cash receipts from September 2014 to June 2017. Cebuhar took cash from the company's daily receipts before making the deposits into the company's bank account. To conceal her fraud and embezzlement, Cebuhar modified and reduced QuickBooks entries to match the bank deposits.
In her second scheme, Cebuhar falsely inflated her wages by awarding herself unauthorized hourly raises in January 2015 and January 2017. Through this fraud scheme, Cebuhar embezzled approximately $7,369.
In her third fraud scheme, she misused two business credit cards by charging personal expenses to the cards beginning in 2016. Cebuhar then caused the payment of the company credit card bills without making any reimbursement for her use of the company's cards for personal expenses, resulting in a total loss of approximately $6,646.
In her fourth scheme, Cebuhar used the Eldon Drug Company's bank account to electronically pay her personal credit card bill from January 2017 to June 2017. Through this fraud scheme, she embezzled approximately $6,812.
Under federal statutes, Cebuhar is subject to a sentence of up to 30 years in federal prison without parole on each of the four counts. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a pre-sentence investigation by the United States Probation Office.
This case was investigated by the FBI and the Eldon Police Department.