A woman from Washington, D.C., will serve 11 months in prison for her role in a scheme that stole more than $393,000 from her nonprofit employer, the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the District of Columbia announced on Wednesday.
According to court records, Laura Lee Dudley, 45, began working for a district organization in January 2008, providing educational programs, training, and development assistance to Middle Eastern and North African groups.
Dudley began working for the nonprofit as an administrative assistant. One of her jobs was making purchases using a corporate credit card. Later, she moved departments and became an accountant.
The USAO stated that beginning in 2020, Dudley and her co-conspirator Daniel Park (who was sentenced to eight months in jail) used the company credit card to make Amazon purchases for personal purposes, including gift cards, gadgets, and cosmetic products. They sent these purchases to both the nonprofit’s headquarters and their personal houses.
According to the evidence, Dudley and Park failed to log or report many of their purchases; in other cases, Park created bogus invoices to add to a log to disguise these transactions.
After the nonprofit hired a new chief financial officer, they began to scrutinize the quantity of Amazon transactions made in the administration department. Law enforcement investigators discovered that Dudley received just under $334,000 of the hundreds of thousands stolen from the foundation.
On May 3, 2022, the organization terminated Dudley.
On October 21, Dudley pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud.
Dudley’s prison sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release. She and Park will also be required to pay restitution in excess of $393,000. Dudley must also pay a criminal forfeiture money judgment totaling more than $333,000.
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