Former Yale Medical School employee stole over $40 million in crypto and bought luxury cars & homes
A ladder of ‘fight a scammer, they gon’ plan. A former employee of Yale Medical School has pleaded guilty to stealing more than $40 million from the medical school, NBC News reports.
Jamie Petrone of Lithia Springs, Georgia pleaded guilty to “one count of wire fraud and one count of false tax return Monday in Hartford federal court in the case,” according to a federal press release.
The 42-year-old allegedly purchased a total of $40,504,200 in electronics and shipped them to an out-of-state business for resale. The funds would then go to Maziv Entertainment LLC, “of which Petrone is an operator, according to prosecutors.” It is said that Petrone used the money to buy “expensive real estate, travel and cars.”
The chief financial and administrative officer began working at Yale in 2008. She is believed to have started the scam in 2013. According to the document, “she placed an order or had another employee order hardware. million-dollar electronics, such as Microsoft Surface Pro tablets and iPads, from vendors using the Yale Med fund. Petrone then arranged to have the hardware shipped to an out-of-state business in New York, which resells the goods,” prosecutors said.
The funds would then go to Maziv Entertainment LLC, “of which Petrone is an operator, according to prosecutors.”
Because of her position with the school, she doesn’t need authorization to buy anything over $10,000. She will also break down purchases to avoid alerting school officials. Petrone will forge internal documents and list purchases as medical school items.
Petrone also “failed to pay taxes on the proceeds of the stolen equipment, which resulted in more than $6 million in damages to the U.S. Treasury Department,” prosecutors said.
As part of the settlement, she lost more than $560,000, six luxury cars and three properties.
“Multiple sclerosis. Petrone has accepted responsibility for her actions and is very remorseful,” Petrone’s attorney, Frank J. Riccio II, told NBC News Wednesday morning. sentence and repair some of the damage done.”
She is currently out on bail and will be sentenced on June 29.
