An Eden Prairie woman has received a two-year term for embezzling more than $1 million over a 7½-year span from the Edina furniture and home furnishing manufacturing company where she worked.
2 years in prison for woman who embezzled $1.1M from her Edina employer, spent money on luxuries
She spent some of the money on designer clothing purchases in Las Vegas, and luxury spa services and top-end hotel stays in Edina and Miami.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
October 4, 2024 at 3:18PM
Monica R. Svobodny, 52, was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis after pleading guilty to wire fraud for stealing while she was a supply chain and engineering manager at family-owned Sico Inc.
In total, Svobodny embezzled more than $1,137,000 from May 2016 to November 2023. Along with her two years in prison, her sentence includes two years of supervised release and an order to make restitution for the full amount that she stole.
Ahead of sentencing, prosecutors argued for Svobodny to be sentenced to somewhere close to the bottom of the federal guideline range of 2¾ to nearly 3½ years in prison followed by three years of supervised release.
The defense countered that six months of home confinement and a year of supervised release would be more fitting, given that Svobodny “is in possession of the full amount of restitution” and quickly acknowledged her guilt.
According to court documents:
Svobodny regularly used company credit cards for unauthorized personal expenses such as designer clothing purchases in Las Vegas, and luxury spa services and top-end hotel stays in Edina and Miami.
To conceal her fraud, she left unapproved credit card expenses as “pending” for accounting purposes. On more than 300 occasions, she used company cards to transfer money to herself via PayPal to cover personal expenses. Svobodny also edited PayPal transaction receipts and fraudulently listed some of the expenses as payments to a defunct company, “DK Fasteners Corp.”
Sico officials caught on to the thefts after noticing a disconnect between its growing product lines and its fiscal health. That led them to review Svobodny’s company credit card.
Sico specializes in various forms of folding furnishings, including cafeteria tables, portable stages and portable dance floors for hotels, convention centers and other industries. Along with its Edina headquarters, it has offices in Europe, Asia and Australia.
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