BOISE – A 44-year-old Oregon woman has been sentenced to 27 months in prison for her role in a massive embezzlement scheme that stole over $852,000 from a Boise-based healthcare system.
Sara Curnow, who was employed by Pinnacle Pension Services, was sentenced on [date] to 27 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, a condition of which is home confinement for 6 months, for the crime of wire fraud, U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson announced. Additionally, Chief U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ordered Curnow to forfeit and pay restitution of $852,041 to St. Luke’s Health System.
According to the plea agreement, Curnow embezzled the funds between approximately 2008 and 2015 while working as an FSA Administrator at Pinnacle. The healthcare system, which was a client of Pinnacle, maintained bank accounts at Wells Fargo Bank into which withholdings of pre-tax FSA funds from participating employees were deposited and from which disbursements were made to these employees after they were approved by Pinnacle.
Curnow manipulated the Pinnacle claims system to create dummy elections and claims payments for St. Luke’s employees, directing the claims payments to be sent by interstate wire transfer from St. Luke’s FSA account at Wells Fargo Bank to Pinnacle’s trust account at Wells Fargo Bank, and then to Curnow’s bank accounts at Ally Bank, Mountain America Federal Credit Union, and Navy Federal Credit Union.
Curnow’s scheme went undetected for several years due to the large number of employees at St. Luke’s, with between 5,000 and 11,000 employees from 2009 through 2015. The case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration and the Boise Police Department.
The investigation and prosecution of this case is part of efforts underway by President Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force (FFETF), which was created in November 2009 to wage an aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes.
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Key Facts
- State: Idaho
- Category: Fraud & Financial Crimes
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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