Scam fed tony lifestyle, officials say - Embezzled $Millions, Testifies Against Self in Wife's Trial

FORT WORTH - For several years, Tom Pucher and his wife, Sandra, lived lavishly.

They owned three houses in Tarrant County, a 50-foot yacht and a ski boat. Four-wheelers and personal watercraft. A travel trailer. Diamonds. Cash.

Not bad for a husband who worked in a mailroom and a wife who sold overhead projectors. Not good for the Houston-based oil company from which Tom Pucher is suspected of stealing millions.

Tom Pucher, 31, is accused of swindling almost $3 million over six years from Burlington Resources, one of the world's largest independent oil and natural gas exploration and production companies.

Most of the couple's assets, which authorities say were purchased with stolen money, have been seized by the Tarrant County district attorney's office. Tom Pucher is now in the Tarrant County Jail; Sandra Pucher has managed to stay out of it.

This week, Sandra Pucher, 50, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit theft over $200,000 and was sentenced to 10 years' probation and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. She still faces a money-laundering charge.

During her trial, her attorney blamed the theft on her husband, saying she had no idea that the money was stolen. And Tom Pucher supported that argument, testifying that he - and only he - was responsible for the crime.

Tom Pucher is scheduled to stand trial at the end of April on two counts of theft over $200,000 and two counts of money laundering. If convicted, he could face up to life in prison.

Tom Pucher's attorney, Tom Hill, did not return repeated phone calls Thursday and Friday.

James Bartlett, a spokesman for Burlington Resources, has referred all inquiries about the crime to the district attorney's office.

Based on their investigation, as well as Tom Pucher's testimony at his wife's trial, prosecutors Joe Shannon and David Lobingier say this is how the money disappeared:

While in high school, Tom Pucher began work as an intern at the downtown Fort Worth offices of Burlington Resources, where his father had worked in the information technology department for many years.

Pucher later went to college but eventually returned to work in the company's mailroom on the second floor of the Burnett Plaza building. Part of his job was to order paper products for the company and send invoices to its various cost centers for payment.

"If the executive office in Houston needed paper, for example, he would place an order, an invoice would come in and he would approve it," Lobingier said.

Prosecutors said that's when Pucher came up with a scheme that afforded him a sophisticated lifestyle.

In 1993, Pucher began dating Sandra Plummer, a single mother of two who sold projectors and audiovisual equipment to Burlington Resources.

The following year, according to Pucher's testimony at his wife's trial, he began creating fake invoices on his computer at home and in the office that were almost identical to those from a company where Burlington Resources regularly ordered products.

Lobingier said, "Everything else [on the invoice] is the same except the address where to submit the checks."

Burlington Resources, in turn, believing that it was paying money to a legitimate company, began sending checks to Pucher.

Authorities estimate that from 1994 to 1997, Tom Pucher - whose annual salary was about $35,000 - received $706,298 from the fake invoices.

In December 1997, Pucher and Sandra Plummer married and, prosecutors said, the stakes got higher. From 1998 to 2000, the Puchers received $2,132,875, prosecutors said.

Even after Tom Pucher was laid off from the company in July 1999, Lobingier said, the invoices kept coming in - and the money kept going out.

But in the summer of 2000, an accounts payable clerk came across some invoices and noticed that the signature didn't look right. The company started an internal investigation, conducted an audit and soon realized that $2,839,173 was unaccounted for.

The company contacted the Economic Crimes Division of the Tarrant County district attorney's office and, on Oct. 31, 2000, authorities issued a search warrant - and an arrest warrant - for Tom Pucher.

Several months later, a grand jury indicted Sandra Pucher, and she, too, was arrested, although she posted bail quickly and was freed.

During her trial, Sandra Pucher's attorney, Paul Conner, blamed her husband, arguing that she believed that her spouse was independently wealthy.

"She understood him to be someone who had a great deal of money," Conner said. "His father was a high executive with Burlington Resources and he claimed to have had a large inheritance from a deceased relative."

Conner said Tom Pucher was a smooth talker who "didn't do things in halfway measures."

"When he was pursuing her romantically, he didn't send one dozen roses; he sent four or five dozen roses at the same time. He bought big expensive gifts and jewelry for her. During the entire dating period, he had lots of cash, lots of vehicles - Corvettes, motorcycles, race boats. And he continued that lifestyle - and accelerated it - after they got married.

"She did not realize that stealing was going on."

In what some attorneys called unusual, Tom Pucher backed up that argument by testifying at his wife's trial that he stole the money, not his wife, and asked jurors not to punish her.

"It is the first time in my career that a co-defendant who has not been convicted has willingly taken the stand to testify to his own guilt and try to absolve another co-defendant of the charge," Conner said.

Conner said that Sandra Pucher is devastated by what has occurred and is "extremely grateful to the jury for probating her sentence."

Authorities have begun forfeiture procedures, seizing more than $750,000 worth of the couple's assets, in an effort to recoup some of Burlington Resources' losses and to pay for the cost of prosecuting the couple.

Prosecutors said about the only thing the couple owns right now is a large $317,000 home in Hurst whose mortgage they paid off in 18 months.

And even that, prosecutors said, may not be theirs for long.

"I really want to let the public know," prosecutor Shannon said, "that there is some teeth to white-collar crime prosecution."

Melody McDonald, (817) 390-7386 mjmcdonald@star-telegram.com