Former Maquoketa Travel Agent Sentenced on Federal Mail Fraud Charges
Davenport, IA- On October 9, 2009, Brinadene S. Kopiske, 37, of Osage Beach, Missouri, and formerly of Maquoketa , Iowa, was sentenced to 71 months imprisonment for each of two counts of mail fraud, the sentences to run concurrently, announced United States Attorney Matthew G. Whitaker. United States District Judge John A. Jarvey ordered that Kopiske will serve a term of 6 years supervised release following her incarceration and pay an assessment of $200 to Crime Victims Fund. A hearing to determine the amount of restitution owed to Kopiske’s numerous victims will be held at a later date.
Kopiske was an officer of her family-owned company, BZ Companies, Inc., located in Maquoketa, Iowa. BZ Companies, Inc., which is now defunct, included a travel agency by the name of BZ Travel. The charges in this stemmed from the operation of BZ Travel.
Beginning around July 16, 2003, and continuing until around March 11, 2004, Kopiske devised a scheme to defraud customers of BZ Travel. Kopiske had used the company checking accounts as personal checking accounts, withdrawing company funds and issuing company checks to pay her personal expenses, thereby causing financial shortages that she attempted to cover by fraudulent transactions. As a consequence, and without authority, she engaged in numerous unauthorized credit card transactions involving the credit cards of customers of BZ Travel and others, those customers including companies, as well as individual employees working for these companies, this despite the fact that most of the travel costs for these customers had already been pre-paid. Her use of these customer credit cards included, among other things, paying for personal vacations for herself and family members.
As part of the scheme, Kopiske sometimes double-billed the same expenses to a specific customer’s credit card. She sometimes billed one customer’s travel costs to another customer’s credit card.
In an attempt to cover up her scheme, Kopiske sent numerous false mailings and faxes containing false staements, and issued numerous checks that she knew would be returned due to nonsufficient funds. The loss caused by Kopiske’s scheme exceeded $200,000.
This investigation was conducted by the United States Secret Service and the United States Postal Inspection Service..