A Virginia Beach, Va., woman has been sentenced to four years in prison for stealing more than $1 million from a small business client. Maria Gene Reich, 45 was convicted of writing checks on the accounts of a company she served.Reich was president of ASOC. Inc., which did business as On Call Accountants, which offered a variety of business services to clients, including preparing checks and scheduling payments for the unnamed client. She was convicted of two counts of wire fraud because although she had no signature authority for the company butt used a stamp with the owner's signature to write checks and had online access to its accounts.
Given the agreement between Reich and her client, she should have earned a maximum of $98,400 for services rendered between January 2015 and December 2018. Instead, she made 366 payments to her Capital One person and business credit card counts of about $629,265 in client funds.
In addition, she applied to the Small Business Administration for a $150,000 Economic Injury Disaster Loan on the client’s behalf. The loan was received in May 2020 and in April $2021, she asked for a total $500,000, which was also approved by the SBA.
However, Reich immediately transferred $150,000 to her own accounts and on Sept. 27, 2020, withdrew about $93,416 from her savings account for a home in Virginia Beach, where she and her family live.
Reich deposited EIDL funds in her children’s bank accounts and also made payments for her mortgages, credit cards, personal loan, and life insurance policy. She used the remaining $350,00 of the loan to pay for a variety of personal expenses.
