Springfield personal assistant sentenced for $200K fraud scheme

A Springfield woman who served as a personal assistant for a local couple was sentenced yesterday for a scheme involving hundreds of fraudulent transactions and the theft of over $200,000.

U.S. District Judge Beth Phillips sentenced Tessa Riley, 25, to two years in federal prison without parole and ordered her to pay $215,167 in restitution to her victims, according to a news release from the office of Tammy Dickinson, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

The husband-and-wife victims - identified in case documents as R.E. and A.E. - hired Riley in February 2012 to make travel arrangements, run errands, respond to correspondence, call repair workers and enter personal financials on their computer via the Quicken budget program. As part of her employment, she was given permission to make small purchases and make travel arrangements on a credit card. Riley was hired because R.E. has a job as an engineering professor and A.E. as a physician, causing them to travel away from home for extended periods of time.

In December, Riley pleaded guilty to a wire fraud scheme that started roughly four months after she was hired. She admitted to linking her credit card to her employers’ checking account as a means to make online payments, credits and withdrawals to pay personal expenses. Between June 2012 and September 2013, Riley admitted she made 333 fraudulent transactions withdrawing $192,019 from the checking account, according to the release.

Riley also used her employers’ credit cards to make $29,144 in unauthorized purchases in 23 fraudulent transactions.  

According to court documents, Riley knew R.E. suffered from two diagnoses of cancer, including a brain tumor, but continued to steal from their accounts while the couple was in Houston, Texas, for three months while he received life-saving cancer treatments. To cover the treatments, the victims were forced to withdraw a large sum of money from their retirement funds to cover the lost funds stolen by Riley, according to the release.

After the couple discovered unexplained transactions on their accounts and told Riley they would meet with the bank personally, she sent them a text message admitting her fraud and theft. Further text messages to the couple said she embezzled the funds to “make ends meet” and asked the couple not to press charges.

However, the investigation found Riley actually used much of the stolen funds to purchase luxury items, including a car, airline tickets overseas, expensive hotels and restaurants, high-end clothing, technology and tuition at Drury and Missouri State universities. She also made cash withdrawals to purchase health and beauty products she was selling as a side business, according to the release.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Carney. It was investigated by the U.S. Secret Service and the Greene County Sheriff’s Department.[[In-content Ad]]