SAN FRANCISCO—Brooke Campbell Solis was sentenced to 37 months in prison and purchased to pay back $500,000 in restitution for wire fraud charges levied in connection with a scheme to embezzle money from her former employer, introduced United States Legal professional Stephanie M. Hinds and FBI Specific Agent in Cost Craig D. Good. The sentence was handed down by the Honorable James Donato, U.S. District Judge.
Solis, 51, of Austin, Texas, pleaded guilty to the fees on August 23, 2021. In accordance to the plea settlement, in January of 2018, Solis was an attorney licensed to apply law in the Condition of California when she was employed by a San Francisco-centered economical technology business as its basic counsel. For most of her work, she was permitted to do the job remotely from her house in Austin, Texas. In her ability as common counsel, she managed the authorized, economical, and accounting procedures for the company and in March, 2019, she was promoted to the position of Chief Organization Officer at the firm. In link with her position tasks, Solis was offered “Super Administrative” privileges inside of the accounting and expenditure administration plans applied by her employer. According to the plea agreement, Solis acknowledged that she employed these privileges to defraud her former employer and embezzle revenue from the corporation.
A single method Solis applied to defraud her previous employer was by preparing and applying fraudulent invoices. Specifically, she asked for payment from the employer to a shell organization, The Paralegal Group LLC, that she designed and controlled. On June 2, 2019, Solis entered into a consulting agreement in between The Paralegal Group and her employer. Solis applied the initials “R.D.,” to indicator the settlement. On the very same working day that Solis signed the consulting agreement—both on behalf of herself as The Paralegal Group and for her employer—Solis also submitted an bill for $9,222.50 from The Paralegal Group. The invoice was dated May possibly 31, 2019, before the consulting settlement even arrived into existence.
Another technique Solis applied to defraud her former employer was to seek out reimbursement for fraudulent bills. For illustration, on July 24, 2019, two days immediately after ending her work with her previous employer, Solis submitted a personalized expense of $4,575, for 61 times of “Jackson and Oliver boarding” at a dog boarding organization. In the plea arrangement, Solis admitted that the boarding of the canines was a individual price. Even so, at the time she submitted the fraudulent expenditure, she experienced accessibility to her prior businesses account and continue to exercised super-administrative privileges which had not however been taken absent from her. In sum, Solis prompted payment of the $4,575 to be paid out by her former employer and the cash to be electronically deposited into her own account.
Solis also continued to defraud the firm just after she remaining. She was billed with, and pled guilty to, 4 wire fraud transactions, in which she diverted at least $400,000 of the company’s money to her possess personalized checking account just about two months following her employment finished. In total, Solis stole more than $500, 000 from the sufferer company.
On July 29, 2021, the Business of the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California filed an details charging Solis with six counts of wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343. Solis pleaded guilty to all 6 counts.
Solis agreed to surrender her license to practice law as portion of her plea arrangement. Judge Donato requested the defendant to self-surrender and start serving her jail expression on March 21, 2022. In addition, Judge Donato ordered Solis to provide a 3-calendar year term of supervised release to begin just after the jail expression has expired.
Assistant U.S. Lawyer Robin Harris is prosecuting the scenario. The prosecution is the final result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.