Woman Sentenced to 6+ Years in Prison for Embezzling $800,000 from IT Company

An Irving woman was sentenced Tuesday to more than six years in federal prison for embezzling more than $800,000 from her employer, announced U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton.

She-Daria Latisha Owens-Sharp, 42, pleaded guilty in April 2022 to one count of wire fraud. She was sentenced Tuesday to 77 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay, who ordered her to pay $1.1 million in restitution – the amount she embezzled from the company plus the amount of extra payroll taxes the company incurred as a result of her fraud.

According to court documents, Ms. Owens-Sharp, who served as operations manager for an IT staffing service company from April 2012 to March 2019, admitted that she requested paper paychecks for employees in addition to those employees’ direct deposit checks. She then altered the paper checks, removing the employees’ names and replacing them with her own, and deposited the checks into her own bank account.

She further admitted that she informed the company’s payroll vendor that her salary had been increased from $17 to $25 per hour (a nearly 50 percent increase), causing the company to increase her direct deposit, without authorization. She concealed her lie from the company by making false entries in their records reflecting payroll and expenses for employees that had left the company.

Ms. Owens-Sharp admitted that she deposited approximately 376 altered checks totaling more than $818,000. The company paid an additional $224,000 in payroll taxes on the fraudulently obtained checks, resulting in a loss to the company of more than $1 million.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Dallas Field Office conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Brasher prosecuted the case.