A 45-year-old Parker woman has been sentenced to 6½ years in a federal prison and ordered to pay $2.6 million in restitution mostly to small businesses after she embezzled money from their employee benefit plans.
U.S. District Court Judge William Martinez also sentenced Emily Strunk to serve three years on supervised release following her prison term, said Jeffrey Dorschner, spokesman for Acting U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer.
“Ms. Strunk deliberately and systematically stole the hard-earned money of small business employees. We don’t do that,” Troyer said in a statement.
Employee Benefits Security Administration and agents, as well as Assistant U.S. Attorney Anna Edgar did excellent work investigating and prosecuting the case, Troyer said.
Strunk was a third-party administrator for employee pension and retirement plans for various businesses including North American Employer Solutions, the news release says.
Between 2005 and September of 2015, she transferred money from her clients’ employee pension or retirement funds to her personal bank accounts, the news release says. In some cases she instructed clients to send employee retirement contributions directly to her checking accounts fraudulently identified as “trust accounts.”
Strunk used her clients’ money for her own personal and business expenses. Most of Strunk’s clients were small businesses. She falsified plan statements by indicating the retirement funds were invested when they were actually placed in her account. She filed falsified forms with the U.S. Department of Labor, Dorschner’s news release says.
“The role of IRS Criminal Investigation becomes even more important in embezzlement and fraud cases due to the complex financial transactions that can take time to investigate,” said Special Agent in Charge Steven Osborne, who oversees the in the Denver field office.
