<p>The former bookkeeper for a Franklin construction company was ordered to serve nearly five years in prison and pay back more than $315,000.</p>
<p>Erica Howard, 42, of Indianapolis, pleaded guilty to a federal wire fraud charge and was sentenced in U.S. District Court to 58 months in prison and three years of supervised release.</p>
<p>She was charged after an investigation by the Franklin Police Department and the FBI that began after a check from the company where Howard worked, Dukate Fine Remodeling, bounced.</p>
<p>Investigators found that Howard began taking money from the company just months after starting work there as a bookkeeper.</p>
<p>Howard had used company accounts to pay for more than a dozen credit cards, along with electronics and other items she bought online. She then created false records for the company’s accountant, along with fake bank statements that she had made to make the numbers match.</p>
<p>By the time the theft was discovered, the company was missing $315,000, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills for the company had not been paid, according to a news release from the U.S. District Attorney.</p>
<p>The Franklin-based company was forced to lay off workers, and the owners had to tap into their retirement savings in order to keep the business running, the release said.</p>
<p>“Ms. Howard was entrusted with the finances of this family-owned business but chose to betray that trust for her own financial gain. Those actions not only affected the company’s owners, but employees who lost their jobs through no fault of their own,” Robert A. Middleton, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis Division, said in the release.</p>
<p>Company officials estimated the company had to spend about $400,000 to repair the damage done by the theft, which included state, federal, payroll and property taxes not being paid.</p>
<p>“Fraud on a small business often impacts much more than the bottom line,” U.S. District Attorney Josh Minkler said in the release.</p>
<p>“It can cost people good jobs, as it did here and breeds distrust, especially when the fraud is perpetrated by a trusted employee. People who exploit a position of trust for purely personal gain will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”</p>
<p>Howard also has a criminal history, with past convictions of fraud, forgery and theft that stem back at least 10 years, the release said.</p>
<p>Company officials had said they did not know about Howard’s criminal record when they hired her.</p>
