Aurora woman sentenced to jail time for embezzlement scheme

An Aurora woman on Friday was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison without parole for mail fraud and filing false tax returns in order to embezzle nearly $250,000 from her employer, according to a news release from Beth Phillips, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

In her July guilty plea, Diana Kay Erickson, 46, admitted she embezzled $219,606 from the now-defunct Superior Lifts Inc. between Sept. 7, 2006-April 2, 2008, and $34,242 from another of the owners' businesses, Goolsby Rental Properties, between March 14, 2006 and Dec. 18, 2006.

Erickson worked as a bookkeeper at automobile lifts company Superior Lifts, which operated in Aurora in 2004 and moved to Nixa in 2009. She performed similar duties for Goolsby Rental Properties, which managed properties in the Wichita, Kan., area.

On multiple occasions, Erickson stole checks mailed to Superior Lifts as payments and deposited them in her personal bank account. She also filed false tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service for 2006, 2007 and 2008, failing to report the embezzled income from Superior Lifts and Goolsby Rental Properties. The tax loss to the government - without penalties and interest - was $57,801, according to the release.

The case is being prosecuted by Supervisory Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Oliver and was investigated by the FBI, IRS-Criminal Investigation, the Aurora Police Department and the Lawrence County prosecuting attorney’s office.[[In-content Ad]]