A secretarial employee of a national labor union has been sentenced to three years in prison for embezzling more than $500,000 from the union’s political action committee.

Cora Carper, 22, was sentenced to 37 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for embezzling $502,586 from the PAC of the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers, based in Lanham, Md. She must also pay restitution of $495,286.

From June 2009 to February 2011, Carper printed over 300 checks from the Insulators Political Action Committee made out to “cash”, “petty cash” or “cash reimbursement” and bearing electronic signatures of PAC officials. She cashed the checks and put false candidate names as recipients into the PAC’s computer accounting system. She also entered false entries for expense reimbursements and conference expenses. Carper was indicted in November 2012 and pleaded guilty in April 2013. View Department of Justice release.

The PAC made a cash adjustment to their accounts of $499,200 on Dec. 31, 2011. Zurich American Insurance Company covered the loss and paid the PAC $499,200 on March 10, 2012.

The committee indicated to the Federal Election Commission that it “failed to discover the misappropriation in part because the bank statements appear not to have included copies of all checks cashed or their correct check numbers. The Committee has arranged for more complete and informative bank statements and has assigned to an employee other than the secretary responsible for preparing checks the task of reconciling the bank statements with the committee’s accounting records.”

The PAC has receipts of about $500,000 per cycle and maintains about $500,000 in cash on hand.

This case will be added to our 
list
 of Embezzlements and Missing Funds.