Watkinsville Resident Sentenced For Wire Fraud

An Oconee County woman was sentenced last week to 33 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to embezzling nearly $500,000 from the company she'd worked at for more than 20 years.

Watkinsville resident Vickie Rabun Carithers was sentenced at a hearing at the in Athens by Chief U.S. District Judge C. Ashley Royal, a clerk confirmed.

Carithers pleaded guilty to one charge of wire fraud March 2, said Graham Thorpe of the U.S. U.S. Attorney's Office of the Middle District of Georgia.

Oconee County authorities were notified in fall 2009 after Carithers left a typed note for her boss at Quarterman & Hodson law firm in Bogart admitting to illegally transferring business funds and stopped coming to work, said Lt. David Kilpatrick, chief investigator at the .

The transfers happened in small amounts, perhaps $6,000-$7,000 a month, over a period of almost a decade, Kilpatrick said.

“It was just a trusted employee that got carried away and started utilizing access to the company funds to pay her bills,” Kilpatrick said, adding that there hadn't been evidence of Carithers using the money to purchase any flashy, expensive items.

“[She was paying] mortgage payments, car and truck payments and her personal bills,” he said. “No one thing ever stood out at all.”

Kilpatrick said he has worked on a half dozen similar cases in the past 14 years. He was working on two other cases exceeding a half million dollars at the time Carithers' case was reported, though most cases “are well under $100,000.”

The comptroller position was the only one Carithers had had, and she was trusted by her employer with signature rights, he said.

“She'd earned her position in the company and was trusted,” he said. “That's why they never knew what hit 'em.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was also notified by Carithers' employer in fall 2009, headed up the investigation. Calls to the FBI field office had not been returned as of Wednesday afternoon.

Carithers is yet to begin her sentencing and will likely serve her time in a federal prison in the Florida panhandle or Alabama, Kilpatrick said. No local charges were filed on top of the federal wire fraud charge.

Sue McKinney, public affairs specialist at the U.S. Attorney's Office's Middle District of Georgia, said in addition to the prison term, Carithers was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $462,553.75.

Carithers was represented by Tina Hunt of the federal public defender's office in Macon.

"(Carithers) is very remorseful and very sorry and is prepared to and has accepted her responsibilty," Hunt said on Thursday.  She gave no additional comment.