Don't hate Ligia Baciu because she's beautiful–nor because she stole more than $236,000 from
her employer to pay for airfare, hotels, an engagement ring and
fertility treatments for her domestic partner.
After pleading guilty to 24 felony counts, the Fullerton 35-year-old today was sentenced to three years and four months in state prison, ordered to pay more than $236,000 in restitution and fined $500,000 payable to the county
of Orange (which can really use it, apparently).
]
If Baciu had fought and been convicted of the original charges, she faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in a prison cell.
She worked in the accounting department of Sweet Life Enterprises, a
subsidiary of
Brea-based Fresh Start Bakeries, Inc., where she was issued a company
credit card
in February 2008 to cover corporate expenses like shipping fees. But she stole more $236,000 by charging unauthorized personal
expenses on her corporate
credit card and additional credit and
gas cards she opened in her own name and paid off with Fresh Start's
plastic.
Besides the aforementioned items, Baciu fraudulently
charged groceries, clothing, personal bill payments and a down payment
on an Audi. She tried to conceal her thefts by
altering company books to make it appear other employees made those
buys.
After she left Sweet Life
in October 2009, she still stole from her
former employer through January 2010, when an accounting
review of the business' credit card statements revealed her thefts. The Brea Police Department investigated before arresting Baciu on May 16.
Baciu copped to 21 felony counts of computer access and fraud and three felony counts
of fraudulently using access cards with sentencing enhancement
allegations for loss over $100,000, aggravated white collar crime over
$100,000, and property loss over $200,000.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.