A federal jury is to begin deliberating today on 25 embezzlement-related charges against Lynn Espejo, a former bookkeeper for a group of central Arkansas physicians who says one of them authorized her to reimburse herself from the doctors' shared-expense account for doing his personal shopping.
Espejo, of Sherwood, is accused of stealing $611,099.04 from the account through which several doctors -- up to nine at one time -- shared common expenses between March 2007 and October 2010.
Espejo contends that as the office manager for Practice Management Services Inc., through which a group of doctors shared some costs and also had their individual bills paid, she also kept track of what she called Dr. Bruce Sanderson's "slush fund." Sanderson was then Practice Management's president.
Espejo testified Tuesday that Sanderson regularly asked her to purchase items on his behalf that he didn't want his wife to know about, or to pay his personal bills, and then he reimbursed her by putting extra funds in the expense account and allowing her to transfer those extra funds to her own accounts. She said she was also asked to give cash to employees for unofficial Christmas bonuses and was reimbursed for "various things" that she charged on her personal credit card or her personal debit card.
She said Sanderson even insisted that she buy gifts for her own children that he later reimbursed her for.
Espejo acknowledged that she once accidentally bought a trampoline for her house on Practice Management's debit card, but she said other items for which she used that debit card were for Sanderson.
"I did his grocery shopping, and he also had me do grocery shopping for other people," she testified, explaining that he sometimes had her buy school supplies for the children of one of his nurses.
Sanderson denied from the witness stand that he authorized Espejo to make 15 wire transfers totaling nearly $300,000 from the Practice Management account to her personal bank accounts between Nov. 3, 2009, and Sept. 10, 2010. He also denied that he had Espejo make personal purchases for him using her personal funds. He did acknowledge that he sometimes put extra money into the account to cover purchases made on his behalf, such as landscaping for one of his homes.
While investigators found details of the transfers, which had been made through a QuickBooks software program that they found in the recycling bin of Espejo's work computer, she contends she also kept a separate spreadsheet on the computer that detailed all the shopping she did on Sanderson's behalf and how much he reimbursed her.
Espejo said she was never able to present that spreadsheet to prosecutors in her defense because the exculpatory information disappeared after some of the other doctors began looking into the account and somebody changed her password to lock her out of her computer. Her attorneys say that when the doctors eventually turned the case over to federal prosecutors, several documents that could clear Espejo were gone.
Defense attorney Pat Benca suggested in his cross-examination of Sanderson, who was called back to the witness stand Tuesday to respond to Espejo's testimony, that Sanderson himself may have moved the exculpatory information from Espejo's computer into its recycling bin, but Sanderson testified that he didn't even know how to erase anything from a computer.
Benca introduced cellphone records showing that Sanderson and Espejo talked on the phone for 700 minutes, or more than 12 hours, in August 2010 alone. Sanderson acknowledged that he and Espejo had been close during that time, but said he mostly just listened while she talked.
In addition to 15 wire-fraud charges, Espejo is charged with six counts of money laundering in connection with checks or wire transfers she made from her accounts after receiving the funds from the Practice Management account, to pay off a car and pay for part of the construction of her family's new home. The charges allege that she knew the payments were derived from proceeds of wire fraud. U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker threw out a seventh count of money laundering before the trial began.
Espejo is also facing four charges of willfully filing false income tax returns for the tax years 2007-10, for what the Internal Revenue Service contends was her failure to report the $611,099.04 that she received in direct deposits from Practice Management beyond her annual $75,000 salary. She says the money didn't constitute income but comprised reimbursements and gifts from Sanderson.
Benca and defense attorney John Kennedy wanted to tell the jury about Espejo's allegations that another one of the doctors who was part of Practice Management Services Inc. while she worked there had sexually assaulted her in 2010, but Baker refused to let them introduce it. The allegation was reported to Little Rock police, but the doctor was never charged. The attorneys said they wanted to introduce the information to show why the other doctors appeared to have turned against Espejo and made the embezzlement accusations.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jamie Goss Dempsey and Stephanie Mazzanti told jurors to pay attention to the fact that Espejo regularly went to a great deal of effort to misrepresent the purpose of wire transfers, as captured in the QuickBooks records, except in each December, when she knew an accountant would be reviewing the books. The prosecutors also suggested that jurors review the Practice Management debit-card purchases, which included some purchases of women's clothing from high-end shops, to see if they seemed like purchases more likely to be made by Sanderson or Espejo.
Metro on 02/08/2017