SEATTLE — A Kent woman plead guilty in United States District Court on Thursday to embezzling more than $2.5 million from her Everett-based company.
Christin Guillory faces up to 20 years in prison for wire and tax fraud charges related to her 10-year embezzlement scheme. Under the terms of her plea agreement, prosecutors will recommend no more than 41 months in prison.
In the plea agreement, Guillory admits to setting up an account with payment processor Square that made it appear it was an account of a commercial shipping company. Between 2014-19, Guillory secretly paid $1,695,591 to the account and then diverted the money to her own personal bank accounts.
In 2019, Guillory switched from using Square to PayPal for her caper. In 2020 and 2021, she caused the transfer of $604,000 to the PayPal accounts and made false accounting entries to cover her tracks.
Between August and November 2021, Guillory transferred money directly from company accounts to her own bank accounts. She reused invoices and made fraudulent accounting entries to make the payments appear to be legitimate.
All told, Guillory made at least 867 secret transactions that totaled $2,536,086.
She is also charged with making a false tax return for failing to report the millions she embezzled. In 2019, for example, Guillory reported an income of $38,022 but did not report the $615,392 in income she made that year from her embezzlement.
“Ms. Guillory received millions of dollars of ‘involuntary contributions’ from her employer, stolen amounts which she gave herself by abusing her position of trust within the company,” said Special Agent in Charge Bret Kressin, IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS:CI), Seattle Field Office. “Financial and tax crime have consequences, and Ms. Guillory’s guilty plea today is a compelling reminder of that.”
