A former fiscal officer of a Brooklyn charity that does work for the city Department of Education was sentenced to prison on Thursday for embezzling over $2 million that she spent on remodelling her home, spa treatments and on luxury items, federal prosecutors said.
Marcia Joseph, 59, was sentenced to 21 months in prison for stealing funds from an unnamed nonprofit that provides employment and educations services for those in need, according to Joseph Nocella, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Joseph, of Baldwin, Long Island, was also known as Marcia James, Marcia Lewis and Marcia Peters.
According to court filings and statements made in court, Joseph was a former senior fiscal officer for a nonprofit established in Brooklyn. Joseph admitted stealing $2,339,700 from the organization and funnelling the funds to a sham company she had set up called Prestige Business Services.
The invoices described services purportedly provided in connection with a New York City Department of Education educational program focusing on students in shelters and, later, job training for adults in shelters, according to prosecutors.
Over the course of nearly 17 years, Joseph generated and submitted more than 500 fictitious invoices and manipulated the nonprofit's accounting systems to avoid detection. She used the stolen funds to pay for numerous personal expenses, including approximately $235,000 in mortgage payments, $207,000 in credit card payments, $98,000 in car payments, $45,000 in Amazon expenses, and various other personal items, such as home remodeling, spa treatment, landscaping
expenses and luxury goods, prosecutors said.
“By stealing from a charity she was entrusted to serve, the defendant shamefully diverted resources from those in need to line her own pockets,” Nocella said in a statement.
As part of her sentence, Joseph was also ordered to pay $2.3 million in restitution and forfeiture in the amount of $2.3 million.
