Queens Tribune

A Richmond Hill electrical equipment firm employee was charged on Friday with stealing as much as $500,000 from her company.

“The defendant is accused of using her position to unjustly enrich herself by siphoning off hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company. Her alleged conduct represents a betrayal of the confidence that her employer had in her.”

Carol Harte, 49, of Howard Beach was arraigned on charges of second-degree grand larceny and first-degree falsifying business records.

Harte was employed as a bookkeeper for Primary Electrical Equipment from 1992 to 2008. She was given the weekly responsibility for preparing the company’s payroll worksheets, which detailed the company’s contributions to its employees’ 401K savings plans. She was fired earlier this year when an internal audit of the company’s financial records revealed the theft.

Harte allegedly stole a total of $204,351 from the company by overstating its weekly contributions to her 401K plan on 100 different occasions between January 2005 and November 2007, prosecutors said. She allegedly inflated the contributions to reflect amounts ranging from $500 to nearly $3,000 per week instead of the normal $6 to $12 amounts.

She also allegedly issued five company checks, totaling $5,863, to New York State Higher Education Services Corp to pay her son’s student loans.

Harte allegedly admitted to the 401K overpayments and that the total amount she had stolen from the company was approximately $500,000, prosecutors said.

If convicted, she faces up to 15 years in prison.