Irving woman sentenced to 6 years for stealing over $800,000 from an IT company

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) — The Irving woman will spend the next six years in jail for stealing more than $800,000 from her employer, federal officials announced Wednesday.

Daria Latisha Owens-Ships, 42, of Irving, was sentenced to 77 months in prison and ordered to pay $1.1 million – the amount she stole, plus additional payroll taxes caused by her fraud – as company restitution. . In April 2022, she pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud.

Prosecutors said in court that Owens-Sharp admitted that, while serving as the company’s operations manager between April 2012 and March 2019, she requested paper paychecks for employees in addition to those employees’ direct deposit checks. She then altered the paper checks and replaced the employees’ names with her own before depositing them into her personal bank account.

Owens-Sharp also admitted that she told the company’s payroll supplier that her pay was increased from $17 to $25 an hour without permission. She covered up the lie by making false entries in the company’s records that showed the wages and other expenses of people who had already left the company.

In total, Owens-Sharp admitted, she deposited about 376 counterfeit checks totaling more than $818,000. Payroll taxes on counterfeit checks cost the company an additional $224,000, bringing their total losses to over $1 million.