Harrisonburg, VIRGINIA – The former officer manager of a Winchester-based company that provides safety services to construction companies, pleaded guilty yesterday in U.S. District Court in Harrisonburg for stealing more than $200,000 during her employment. United States Attorney Thomas T. Cullen and Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring made the announcement.

Amy Jo Hansen, 44, of Inwood, West Virginia, waived her right to be indicted and pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of wire fraud. At sentencing, Hansen faces up to twenty years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

“Unfortunately, theft by trusted employees is more common than most people realize,” U.S. Attorney Cullen stated today.  “Where these type of embezzlement schemes involve the use of the mail, the internet, or other forms of electronic communication, they become federal crimes, and we will prosecute them.”

“So called ‘white collar’ crime is still crime and we will make sure that people who break the law like this are held accountable,” said Attorney General Herring.

According to court documents, Hansen was employed by Firstline Safety Management from 2001 until her termination in November 2018. During her tenure, Hansen worked as the office manager for more than 10 years. Her duties in that capacity included, but were not limited to, managing the office, ordering supplies, downloading credit card statements, coding purchasing for bookkeeping purposes, and sending invoices to another employee responsible for payroll and accounting.

At relevant times, Firstline utilized three access devices for the purchase of supplies and other work products. Hansen made numerous unauthorized, personal purchases on these devices. Initially, she submitted the credit card statements containing the unauthorized purchases to the company with the unauthorized purchases either miscoded to make them appear authorized or not coded at all.

Beginning in approximately January 2016, Hansen began altering credit card billing statements containing unauthorized purchases, using the edit function on Adobe software to modify the statements to falsely inflate charges from a vendor or create a nonexistent vendor charge, in order to cover up Hansen’s personal charges. The fraudulent charges increased throughout 2016, and by 2017 regularly involved unauthorized purchases of thousands of dollars a month.

The investigation of the case was conducted by the Office of the Virginia Attorney General.  Assistant United States Attorney Ronald M. Huber is prosecuting the case for the United States.