WEST BATH, Maine — A Bath man who embezzled more than $59,000 from a local excavating contractor will spend at least one year in jail and will have to pay back the money he took.
According to Sagadahoc County Superior Court documents, Dale Marshall, 57, of 57 Court St. in Bath entered a guilty plea on May 10 to the charge of Class B theft by unauthorized taking or transfer. Marshall was sentenced to five years in jail, with all but one year suspended and three years of probation. If he violates the terms of his probation, Marshall could be returned to jail.
The court also ordered Marshall to pay restitution of $62,075.26 to J.R. Hill and Sons Inc. Court records indicate that the first payment was due June 15.
As conditions of probation, Marshall is prohibited from having any contact with Stephanie and Jamie Hill, owners of J.R. Hill and Sons, located on State Road in West Bath. He also is prohibited from gambling or entering any American Legion.
The Sagadahoc County Sheriff ’s Department charged Marshall with Class B felony theft on Nov. 8, 2011, following an investigation that determined Marshall had embezzled a total of $59,052 from his former employer, J.R. Hill and Sons Inc., by taking money the family-owned business had earmarked for payments to vendors.
In November, the sheriff’s department said Marshall went to their offices on Sept. 26, 2011, to confess to investigators that he’d been embezzling from J.R. Hill and Sons since 2007.
Stephanie Hill, the wife of Jamie Hill, president and owner of the company founded in 1970, told The Times Record in November that her husband fired Marshall for not performing his duties as office manager just prior to his confession to police.
After Marshall left the company, Stephanie Hill, filling in as office manager, discovered in the check register a check made out to Marshall for $500, which wasn’t what his paycheck should have been. She contacted Marshall about the check.
The following Monday morning, he confessed at the sheriff’s office and the Hills soon received a call from the sheriff’s office informing them of Marshall’s confession. Upon learning the scope of the embezzlement, Stephanie Hill told The Times Record in the phone interview that the couple was “blown out of the water.”
Marshall allegedly told a Sagadahoc detective that in most instances he took money by writing checks to himself through the company’s QuickBooks checking program, printed the checks and then went back into the program and replaced his name on the check with the name of a vendor. He then backdated the check. He also reportedly destroyed copies of the cashed checks sent from the bank.
In a crime impact statement to the judge dated May 10, Jamie and Stephanie Hill wrote, “We have been assaulted professionally, personally and even emotionally as we struggle to regain our footing. Through the course of the last couple of years, we have been unable to pay bills that we made plenty of money to cover. We lost business contracts and weren’t even aware Dale Marshall stole money from us, but it doesn’t end there.
“This theft has had a snowball effect,” they wrote. “Not only is the money gone, but the bills it was supposed to have paid are still due. The relationships with our vendors and business associations that we spent years building have been shattered. Accounts that we’ve had for over 30 years were closed. Resources were lost.”
As a result of Marshall’s embezzlement, the Hills were forced to sell equipment needed for their business, cancel their health insurance and sell a rental property at a significant loss, according to the impact statement. They had to dismiss employees, which Stephanie wrote required her husband to work long hours and triggered a high level of stress on their children and family life. She was forced to return to the business to manage the office and “help my husband put the pieces back together,” which also pulled her away from their children.
“Everything my husband has spent his life working for hangs precariously in the balance,” wrote Stephanie Hill. “We have used savings and all other resources we worked for just to remain in business, and we aren’t out of the dark yet.”
See more from the Times Record at timesrecord.com.
I am an accountant and I always tell businesses not to use QuickBooks, it has no audit trail and makes thefts like this very easy. The Federal Govenment does not allow it its use if you get a contract with them. Busniess owners, always be the check signer so you can see every payment going out. You get what you pay for, and this is why QuickBooks is so cheap.
While I agree that QuickBooks does have limitations, a very
simple control of a proper Bank Reconciliation being performed on a timely
basis would have caught this within one cycle, i.e. a month.
Unfortunately, many companies and organizations are simply not
requesting copies of check images (front and back) be sent with the bank statement
to someone other than the person cutting the checks.
We always recommend that someone like a Business
owner, Executive director or other individual receive the banks statements
directly to prevent this type of scheme.
It is really too bad because this happens a lot and is so easily avoidable. We have a few related articles and resources
just in case anyone is interested in reading more about fraud: CPAIDEA.Com
I work on Federal contracts (military construction contracts) all the time and we use QuickBooks as our accounting software.
I know a bangor area contractor that was using his wife to pay the bills he finds a 12000 credit line asks about it she flips out fine Just pay the bills gets call from supplier how come you haven’t paid us in months owed huge money so he investigates files for divorce for this and other stuff finds one of his houses has almost been paid off the other one is overdue guess which one she got in the divorce ? It almost put him under for good lesson learned now he pays the bills
and she is mad at him I bet..
Oh ps the credit line was maxed out too witchy woman
For 16 years I worked at a large new car dealership. The Pakistani comptroller had a doctor straw buyer to “sell” new Mercedes to, take the money to buy houses all over NE and labeled them as mosques. One day the bank came in, changed the locks throwing 76 employees out of work.
The DA was willing to ask for a shorter sentence if he showed the money trail. Nope! He took the 18 months and was then deported (with the money still unaccounted for).
We found other jobs, but the owner lost his business and new house. He now sells life insurance in NH.