Former WASA worker pleads guilty to stealing $236,000 from utility
By: Scott McCabe
Examiner Staff Writer
May 4, 2009
A former D.C. Water and Sewer Authority employee pleaded guilty in a scheme to embezzle a quarter-million dollars from the utility by falsifying the payroll records of workers and steering money to accounts she and a friend controlled, according to court filings.
Sonia R. Coleman, 28, of Fort Washington, faces up to 10 years in prison but is expected to receive between 18 and 24 months, prosecutors said. Her sentencing was scheduled for Aug. 14.
For more than a year and a half, Coleman, a former payroll specialist in WASA’s downtown D.C. office, electronically increased the pay of 40 fired or on-leave employees without their knowing. She then changed the employees’ direct deposit information so that the money would land in her own account and a friend’s account.
When the payroll stubs arrived for the absent employees, Coleman destroyed them to conceal the unauthorized payments, prosecutors said.
Between May 2006 and January 2008, Coleman ran the scam about 49 times. In all, Coleman admitted to stealing more than $236,000 from the quasi-independent agency.
About $97,000 went into Coleman’s federal credit union account in Greenbelt, and $139,000 was transferred into a friend’s Pentagon Federal Credit Union account in Alexandria, court filings said. The friend was identified in charging documents as “W.J.”
Coleman and her friend spent the money on “personal expenses,” prosecutors said.
Coleman is the only person prosecutors expect to charge at this time in connection with this matter, U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Channing Phillips told The Examiner on Monday.
The scam lasted from May 2006 to January 2008, until credit union officials alerted WASA officials. Officials at WASA immediately placed Coleman on paid leave, hired an accounting firm to examine the payroll records and referred the investigation to the D.C. Inspector General’s Office, a spokeswoman said.
She said Coleman was no longer with the agency, but she did not know when Coleman left.
