If you’re lucky, the only kind of employee theft you’ll have to worry about at your company is parents swiping office supplies for their kids to save a few bucks of their own. Or maybe a cheapskate employee who helps himself to someone else’s lunch from the breakroom fridge.
Imagine your staffers plotting to sell your property and attempting to rewrite your will! A doctor in West Chester, Pennsylvania, knows exactly how it feels after two young women he hired to run his office conspired to steal close to a half-million dollars, before he caught on to their scam.
They robbed him blind! Now (hopefully) justice will be served
Mikayla Zeigler, now 22, and Danielle King, now 25, were arrested earlier this spring for stealing more than $450,000 from a doctor between 2020 and 2021.
The pair are charged with attempting to sell the doctor’s property, valued at more than $1 million, without his permission, as well as theft by unlawful taking, conspiracy, dealing in unlawful proceeds, forgery and identity theft.
Zeigler is also charged with stealing $7,000 from an employee at the doctor’s office.
“These women engaged in a cunning scheme to steal from their boss and spent it lavishly on themselves,” says District Attorney Deb Ryan. “They used the money to pay their rent, student loans, and credit card debt, as well as to purchase cars, cosmetics, tattoos, and vacations. … They had the audacity to forge the doctor’s signature and try to sell over $1 million in real estate and change his will.”
The doctor hired the young women to run the office’s day-to-day business operations. They convinced him to invest in a new electronic banking system, which they used to bilk the practice. With the new system, the pair could access bank accounts, credit cards and statements.
Zeigler and King quit the practice abruptly in August 2021. Maybe they figured they’d stolen enough and might be figured out soon. Detectives began investigating the pair soon after and kept track of large sums of money being transferred via PayPal and possessions of the doctor’s being listed for sale online.
