BELLINGHAM, Wash. — A 44-year-old Sedro-Woolley woman was arrested for allegedly embezzling $1.4 million from a Bellingham hardware store over the course of five years.
The owner and manager of Hardware Sales contacted the Bellingham Police Department in August to report the embezzlement.
The woman who is accused was an assistant manager at the home improvement store at the time.
The investigation found the woman stole over $1.4 million from the business between 2017 and 2022 through a variety of means, according to a police department spokesperson.
The woman was found to have used forged checks, mortgage direct payments, credit card fraud, petty cash theft and "a number of other ways" to steal funds from the company. She made over 190 transactions over the past five years. There is evidence she also stole from the company as far back as 2014.
The woman turned herself in on Jan. 2. She was booked into Whatcom County Jail on seven counts of theft in the first degree, five counts of identity theft and 13 counts of forgery.
The seven counts of theft were for the seven different ways the woman took funds from the company. Five counts of identity theft were for each of the addresses used by the woman where she sent fraudulent credit card purchases, which amount to a felony level of theft. The 13 counts of forgery are for 13 checks she was identified as having forged over the last five years.