(NewsSpace.com) – Greed can make people do some sketchy things, like steal from their employers. A San Antonio, Texas woman who worked for the US Army stole millions of dollars and was caught. She has now been sentenced for her crimes.
According to the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, Janet Yamanaka Mello, 57, was a financial program manager at Fort Sam Houston where she worked for the Installation Management Command-G9 Child and Youth Services Department. She pleaded guilty to stealing more than $108 million from the military branch by forming a shell company and submitting payments to herself.
Mello committed the scam by forming Child Health and Youth Lifelong Development, which purportedly sought grants to provide services to military dependents and families from the 4-H Military Partnership Grant Program. She was able to submit these payments through her capabilities as a financial program manager. Over more than six years, from December 2016 to August 2023, she remitted 50 payments to her shell company, totaling $108,917,749.
The former Army employee would deposit checks and then turn around and spend that money on luxury items. Some of the things she purchased included more than 80 luxury vehicles, extravagant homes, designer clothing, and more than 1,500 pieces of jewelry. Further, she filed fraudulent tax returns, omitting the money she stole and deposited from her yearly filings.
In March, Mello pleaded guilty to five counts of filing a false tax return and five counts of mail fraud. On July 23, she received her sentence. She will spend the next 15 years behind bars for her elaborate scheme.
Following the verdict, Lucy Tan, acting special agent in charge of the IRS Criminal Investigation field office in Houston, said that these types of “crimes have victims,” and that Mello’s greed and selfishness “took opportunities away from the children and families of our military men and women.”
Copyright 2024, NewsSpace.com
