Former Kentucky city employee used stolen $180,000 on Chanel bag, home remodels, more
A former Northern Kentucky city employee has pleaded guilty in connection with stealing more than $180,000 she used for personal purchases that included expensive furniture, a $1,900 Chanel tote and remodeling work at her home.
Allison Donaldson, 50, of Covington, pleaded guilty April 14 to one charge of wire fraud and one charge of aggravated identity theft.
Donaldson worked in the Public Works Department for the City of Covington from 2005 to May 2022 as an administrative manager, according to court records.
The city issued credit cards in the names of employees that they could use for government expenses.
Donaldson had access to the credit card information of other employees. As part of her job, she was supposed to log in credit card purchases and upload receipts and invoices into the city’s bookkeeping system.
Donaldson abused her authority to fabricate and manipulate invoices and receipts to make it appear personal purchases she made were for legitimate expenses, according to her plea agreement.
She also forged receipts and invoices to make it appear her personal purchases had been made by other employees and that a supervisor had approved them, the plea agreement said.
Donaldson uploaded the fake documentation to the bookkeeping system, and the city paid for the purchases.
An audit showed Donaldson used her credit card and the card information of other employees to make $184,736 in purchases for her benefit from February 2020 until March 2022, when she quit after being confronted with irregularities in purchases.
The sample of purchases cited in the plea agreement were: $1,293 for a leather Louis Vuitton agenda; $1,899 for a leather Chanel tote; $3,015.70 for a 5-drawer chest, 3-drawer chest and nightstand from Crate and Barrel; $4,095 for a cabinet; $4,603 for work on her Mercedes Benz; $2,866 for an outdoor umbrella; $4,594 for a outdoor fireplace; $9,450 for a down payment to remodel her master bathroom; and $19,726 in payments to remodel her garage.
The plea agreement spelled out how one fraudulent purchase in October 2020 worked:
Donaldson used information from the city credit card of a co-worker to buy four bar stools at a cost of $4,677 from Serena & Lily, a luxury furniture store.
The company sent her an email to confirm the stools were shipped to her home.
Donaldson used content from that email to make a fake receipt for the purchase of water filtration equipment for a city pool, then uploaded it to the bookkeeping system.
That fabricated email showed the other employee had ordered the equipment and received it, according to Donaldson’s plea, but he told police that wasn’t true.
Police found the four bar stools at Donaldson’s house.
U.S. Attorney Carlton S. Shier IV called Donaldson’s conduct an “egregious betrayal.”
“Any time public servants turn to greed and misappropriate public funds, it does serious damage,” Shier said in a release. “Not only does it deprive communities of necessary — and often very limited — resources, but it severely erodes the trust that communities place in their government.“
The fraud charge Donaldson pleaded to is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, though sentences in federal court often are less than the maximum under advisory guidelines.
The identity theft charge carries a mandatory two-year sentence on top of any sentence on the fraud charge.
U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning scheduled sentencing in September.
