An Eden Prairie woman is accused of embezzling more than $1 million over a 7 ½-year span from the Edina furniture and home furnishing manufacturing company where she worked and spending the money on luxuries.
Charges: Woman stole $1M from Edina employer, treated herself to luxuries
She laundered the money through PayPal and spent it on expensive clothes, spas and hotels, according to prosecutors.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
February 1, 2024 at 2:51PM
Monica R. Svobodny, 51, was charged this week in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis with wire fraud for stealing while working as a supply chain and engineering manager at Sico Inc.
Svobodny was charged by summons and awaits the scheduling of her first court appearance. A message was left Thursday with her attorney seeking a response to the allegations.
Prosecutors charged her under what is known as an “information,” meaning she has indicated her intention to plead guilty. In total, Svobodny embezzled more than $1,137,000 from May 2016 to November 2023.
The charging document did not explain how the embezzlement was exposed.
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 cover 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 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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