Adele Ferguson - Ripoffs and Rotters

Here’s another batch of ripoffs and rotters for the departed 2012:

Feb. 20—Wendy Bryant, 55, stopped her duties as treasurer of the WestSound FC premier soccer club after pleading guilty to first degree theft for taking around $100,000 from the Silverdale-based club. What she did was use club money to buy items on eBay, keeping the purchases off the club’s books.

March 2—A former Seattle Utilities employee has been fined $1,500 for accessing her own account and repeatedly adjusting her utilities bill. Carol Wilhelm, a 29-year SPU employee, retired in August, a month after being questioned by utility officials. An internal investigation found she had made 71 adjustments to her account between 2002 and 2010, including 50 payment arrangements that allowed her to defer paying her bill and avoid action. She agreed to pay a $1,500 settlement.

March 28—A longtime Whidbey Island lawyer has admitted embezzling more than $1 million of his clients’ money. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Portland said Peter Allen Moote, 63, pleaded guilty in Seattle to one count of mail fraud. He represented clients in personal injury, sexual harassment, discrimination and other cases, negotiating settlements for many of them and receiving their settlement checks. He admitted he used the money for his own expenses and for gambling, among other things.

March 29—The court-appointed investigator who found rampant misconduct in the corruption prosecution of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens said during a Senate hearing that federal prosecutors’ actions were “illegal,” but stopped short of suggesting they should be charged with crimes. Henry Schuelke concluded that prosecutors intentionally withheld critical information from the senator’s defense team. He described a “rogue team” of prosecutors and federal agents who allegedly allowed its star witness to give false testimony before a jury that later found Stevens guilty of seven counts of lying. Stevens lost a bid for re-election and died in a plane crash in 2010.

May 10—A Seward Park chiropractor and a woman accused of collecting welfare benefits and food stamps while living in a $1.2 million lakefront home in South Seattle, have been charged with theft of government funds. David Mark Silverstein and Lyudmila Shimonover allegedly embezzled $115,000 in benefit payments from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to charging papers filed in U.S. District Court. The lawsuit alleged that Silverstein collected more than $1,000 a month in recent subsidies from HUD for Lyudmila to live in the home near Pritchard Beach on Lake Washington. He was seen there driving a Jaguar.

May 13—A 27-year-old man suspected of stealing thousands of dollars worth of trees from a Port Orchard nursery was arrested after an unrelated theft led police to a home where 41 missing trees were found. The man was reportedly living near the nursery and is suspected of stealing at least 41 trees including species of Japanese maple, blue spruce, palms, weeping cedar and dwarf nectarine. He was caught when the nursery owner set up security cameras and a video showed him driving up in a Buick and stealing trees.

May 13—A scientist accused of stealing secret formulas from a Utah company has pleaded guilty to a federal computer charge. Prabhu Mohapara, 42, worked for Frontier Scientific Inc. and admitted accessing a company chemical resource notebook and emailing the formula for meso-Tetraphenylporphine or TPP to his brother-in-law in India. The relative was setting up a competing company to undercut Frontier Scientific on prices it charges for pharmaceutical chemicals.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)