A former accounting manager for Cargill has pleaded guilty to stealing $3.1 million from the company and causing the company at least $25 million in losses.
Diane Backis, 50, was an accounting manager at a Cargill grain shipping facility at the Port of Albany, New York. As accounting manager, she was responsible for accounting functions including creating customer contracts, generating and mailing invoices, and receiving and processing customer payments.
Backis pleaded guilty in court on November 28 to mail fraud and falsifying an income tax return.
A former accounting manager for Cargill has pleaded guilty to stealing $3.1 million from the company and causing the company at least $25 million in losses.
Diane Backis, 50, was an accounting manager at a Cargill grain shipping facility at the Port of Albany, New York. As accounting manager, she was responsible for accounting functions including creating customer contracts, generating and mailing invoices, and receiving and processing customer payments.
Backis pleaded guilty in court on November 28 to mail fraud and falsifying an income tax return.
As part of her plea, Backis admitted that she stole hundreds of customer payments sent to Cargill totaling at least $3,115,610 and deposited them into her personal bank accounts, according to the Justice Department (DOJ). Backis also regularly created fraudulent invoices and mailed them to Cargill’s customers. The fraudulent invoices charged Cargill’s customers prices substantially less than what Cargill paid to acquire the grain products, causing Cargill significant financial losses. The fraudulent invoices also directed Cargill’s customers to send payment directly to Backis, thereby bypassing Cargill’s corporate controls.
To hide her activities, the DOJ said Backis made false entries into Cargill’s accounting software to make it appear that customers were paying prices higher than those in her fraudulent invoices, and that customers owed Cargill millions of dollars for delivered grain products, only to reverse those false entries. As a result, Cargill lost at least $25 million.
Backis also admitted that she filed a false 2015 individual income tax return because she declared only $61,208 in total income and omitted more than $450,000 in additional taxable income she received by stealing customer payments intended for Cargill in 2015.
Backis faces up to 20 years in prison, a three-year term of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000. As part of her guilty plea, Backis has agreed to pay Cargill at least $3.5 million in restitution, and to forfeit her house in Athens, an investment brokerage account, and her Cargill pension benefits.
“Cargill has thoroughly audited its controls and trading systems and confirmed that this was an isolated incident, undertaken by one employee at a single Cargill location. Cargill customers were not adversely affected by the fraudulent activity,” a Cargill spokesman told WATTAgNet in an email.
Backis’ sentencing is scheduled for March 28, 2017.
According to WATTAgNet's Top Feed Companies directory, Cargill is the second largest animal feed producer, with 250 feed mills and 19.5 million metric tons of feed production in 2015.
