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Posted on 04/29/2015 9:20:06 PM PDT by WilliamIII
LOS ANGELES — A thriving French bakery that helped revive a stretch of a major boulevard has become a symbol of betrayal for Robert Smylie. The women behind the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood’s La Maison Du Pain on Pico Boulevard said a trip to Paris inspired them to open a neighborhood bakery. Carmen Salindong and her sister said they took out second mortgages, sold property and pooled their life savings to do so. “It was a wonderful story — but it wasn’t true,” said Smylie, 67. Instead, court documents say the women embezzled $5 million from Smylie’s law firm, where Salindong’s sister-in-law kept the books, the Los Angeles Times reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
That’s a lot of dough!
Interesting!!!
I don’t usually travel that far south as KI sidecars LA daily, but when I do, the bakery is FANTASTIC!!!
Seemingly very authentic and fresh. I usually make myself stop even though I’m traveling east and it’s on the north side of the street.
Cooking the books to bake the bread!
How could an attorney be that stupid?
There in lies the answer.
It reminds me of the punch line to an old joke. When on an interview a prospective accountant was asked to add a column of numbers.
He turned it in blank, then asked the interviewer: "How much do you want it to be?"
pingworthy
Lesson for business owners - never let one person do the books.
The smartest Lawyer I ever knew opened a topless club in Texas.
Hard working entrepreneurs?
The reality is a good percentage of biz in LA are from cartel money. They put straw buyers up and have their friends and relatives run these places. Many others are owned/run by mideastern oil money.
Was this a civil or criminal trial? Shouldn’t they all be in jail?
Embezzlement as the basis for this business definitely sounds naughty, but so long as they don’t refuse any services to the homos, it’s acceptable.
If you read the whole article you will get to where the two women-embezzlers refuse to transfer the bakery intact to the lawyer they ripped off. Instead the bakery is going to be liquidated, assets sold off and the proceeds go to the lawyer.
So as far as I can see the thieves are still making money daily running the bakery. Plus I don’t get where they can refuse to hand over a functioning business (bakery) as part of the 5 million dollar restitution they must make
The article was kind of lean of facts about the crime. The LA Time article was only marginally better.
That aside, “white collar” crime pays. Swindlers rarely face hard time compared to someone who say, robs a bank for $4,000. Nope, embezzlement is the way to go.
About five years before I retired, a co-worker friend of mine and I started noticing news articles about embezzlement in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. These articles started appearing at the rate of about one a week, and many times involved considerable sums of money.
We were also intrigued to discover that in virtually every case the embezzler was a female entrusted by the business, charitable firm, or fraternal org. A few of the thieves were male, but we were astonished to discover the overwhelming majority were females.
Usually these females were single women and were given sole control of the business or org. finances. Many times after being caught they claimed a bad gambling habit forced them to steal. And they always meant to pay the money back. Sure.
The question answers itself.
Some attorneys are smart; others are dumb as posts (most of them, imho).
Look at the post-lawyer careers: Judges, politicians...
Embezzlement from charities and non-profits goes on all the time. I know of one where the thief made off with $30000 and was not prosecuted. At least he/she was fired!!!
It was at a religious school
I’ll add to that. I attended a Chamber of Commerce meeting one day with a bank examiner giving a speech to business owners regarding employee theft. The average embezzler is female, between the ages of 35-60, overweight, married with children. Over spender.
Look at some of the stories in the headlines. The chick who stole the girl scout money or the women who stole money from a little league team....they all fit that mold.
No kidding. I attended the meeting at the last minute with my boss, I was his bookkeeper. We had a good laugh because I wasn’t yet 30 yrs old and not yet overweight.
They checked the books and found out she'd been embezzling certain "undetectable" amounts for decades. The school declined to prosecute under promises she'd sell the property and give the money back to the school.
Please ping me with any Southern California related articles. Thank you!
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