I read this story on-line tonight. There hasn’t been a television series based on forensic accounting – but maybe there can be if it focused on stories like this one.
Maybe I am a bit cynical and biased by my experience in fraud and forensic accounting, but what a coincidence that this fellow was murdered just days after his wife was found to be embezzling from him, and the murder has never been solved?
After reviewing news stories every day found through Google News using the key word “embezzlement”, stories like this seem to only be getting better and better. The only thing missing from this story is a boyfriend of the wife who likely killed him to be with her or to have her receive funds as a beneficiary of his trust. Then it would likely be more Hollywood worthy. Check it out for yourself.
Nov 18, 2008 9:58 am US/Pacific
Murdered SF Man’s Widow Guilty Of Embezzlement
CBS 5 CrimeWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) – A San Francisco Superior Court jury has found a Redding woman guilty of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from her husband, a contractor murdered in San Francisco in 2003.
Kathleen Bach, 57, was convicted on Friday, after a four-week trial, of grand theft and forgery for stealing more than $750,000 from a family trust managed by her husband Victor Bach, according to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.
Bach, 71, was murdered at his San Francisco workshop on Oct. 31, 2003, but no one has ever been charged in connection with his murder.
Bach was found dead of blunt force trauma at Western Plumbing and Heating, which he co-owned, after he told his wife he was preparing to head home, according to police.
Kathleen Bach had called police from the couple’s San Mateo home after he failed to return.
Bach was arrested in connection with the embezzlement and theft charges in December 2004 and was indicted by grand jury in August 2006.
The jury on Friday also found Bach guilty of theft and embezzlement from Western Plumbing, where she had been the financial officer, and of money laundering, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutor Robert Ring said during opening statements in the trial that Bach had forged hundreds of checks from both the trust and the company between 2000 and 2003, spending “substantial sums of money on jewelry, clothing and the like.”
The thefts were discovered just days before Victor Bach was murdered, according to Ring.
Bach faces a maximum of 13 years and four months in prison, the District Attorney’s Office said.