WASHINGTON - A 43-year-old Virginia woman, Phoebe Alice Green, has pled guilty to wrongful use of a private company’s credit cards by charging more than $125,000 in personal expenses over a 19-month time span, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor, Jeffrey W. Irvine, Special Agent in Charge, Washington Field Office, U.S. Secret Service, and Cathy L. Lanier, Chief, Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”), announced today.

Green, of Triangle, Virginia, entered her guilty plea today to interstate transportation of stolen property before the Honorable Reginald B. Walton in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. When Green is sentenced early next year, she faces up to 10 years of imprisonment, but is likely to receive 12 to 18 months of incarceration under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.

According to the government’s evidence, Green was employed by Global Risk Strategies LLC (“GRS”), subsequently known as Corporate Risk Underwriters, Inc., from July of 2006 to January of 2008, when GRS terminated Green’s employment because of these matters. GRS was a private equity firm specializing in the purchase of insurance assets. The office for GRS where Green worked was in Washington, D.C.

Green’s job title at GRS was Executive Assistant to the Office Manager. Green’s responsibilities included managing payroll, pensions, benefits, corporate credit cards, office supplies, office contracts, conference calls, IT Supplies, and corporate filings.

As part of her job at GRS, Green had use of GRS Bank of America and American Express credit cards to purchase incidental business and office supplies for GRS. Green was also assigned as the authorized account manager of the American Express Card Account for a GRS employee (“employee #1"). In September of 2006, shortly after she began employment with GRS, Green was instructed by GRS’s Chief Financial Officer that personal expenses were not authorized on company credit cards.

Beginning in July of 2006, Green devised a scheme to steal money that rightfully belonged to GRS. Despite that limitation on the unauthorized use of the GRS’s credit cards for personal expenses, Green purchased goods, merchandise, and services for her personal use and benefit using the GRS credit cards for numerous personal expenses in numerous states and the District of Columbia, knowing that she had no authority from GRS to do so. Between July of 2006 and January of 2008, Green, without authorization, made approximately $91,944.89 in purchases for her personal benefit on the GRS Bank of America credit card assigned to her, approximately $24,752.35 on the GRS American Express credit assigned to her, and approximately $3,765.67 on the GRS American Express credit card assigned to employee #1. The purchases were for Green’s personal use and were not authorized by GRS. Review of the GRS bank records also showed that Green used the GRS credit cards to make payments totaling $5,116.05 on her personal vehicle, a 2006 Mitsubishi Galant.

Green attempted to conceal her fraudulent activity by (a) falsifying her expense reports submitted to GRS in which she said that the charges were for business expenses when, in fact, the charges were for her personal use and (b) excluding the personal expense from her expense claim form analysis and placing it on another card holder’s analysis. The total value of the goods, merchandise, and money wrongfully taken by Green was approximately $125,578.96. Green was arrested in May of 2008 in this matter.

In announcing today’s guilty plea, U.S. Attorney Taylor, U.S. Secret Service Special Agent in Charge Irvine, and MPD Chief Lanier praised the hard work of the investigators involved in this matter, especially U.S. Service Special Agent Eric Traceski and MPD Detective Richard Espinosa. They also acknowledged the efforts of Legal Assistant Lisa Robinson, as well as Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Butler, who is handling this prosecution.