A Huntington woman has been indicted on charges of stealing more than $866,000 over a six-year period from her former employer to pay for her vacations, shopping sprees and high-end restaurant tabs.
Lori Maceluch pleaded not guilty Wednesday at Nassau County court to grand larceny and 378 counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument.
Prosecutors said the 48-year-old woman used her position as bookkeeper for a Locust Valley-based architecture firm to forge a firm partner’s signature on 568 checks she wrote to herself between 2005 and 2011.
Maceluch, who was the company bookkeeper for about 15 years, allegedly disguised the theft by fraudulently enhancing legitimate expenses in the company’s financial records that she had unrestricted and unsupervised access to.
Aside form spending tens of thousands of dollars at Lord & Taylor and Bon Bon’s Chocolatier, her vacations included trips to the Berkshires, Nantucket Island, Fire Island, Florida and the Dominican Republic, authorities said.
The alleged thefts were uncovered and referred to investigators following an internal audit two years ago.
Maceluch was later fired. She faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted and is due back in court Aug. 13. She is being held on $250,000 bail.
