Calif. AG: State Bar Staffer Stole $675K to Pay for 'Spa Treatments' & 'Fancy Hotels'
California’s attorney general filed seven criminal charges this week against the Sharon Elyce Pearl, alleging she embezzled $675,000 from the State Bar of California over an eight-year period.
Pearl, who as director of real property for the bar was responsible for building management, is believed to have kept two sets of books in which she skimmed rent payments from tenants in the bar’s San Francisco headquarters.
Pearl is alleged to have use the ill-gotten gains to pay for “spa treatments, designer clothes, lavish meals, and fancy hotel rooms,” according to a release by Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr.
Pearl, 51, of Oakland, is charged with embezzlement and filing false tax returns. She faces up to nine years in prison if convicted.
The alleged scheme went on unnoticed for so long because the bar reportedly didn’t keep track of rent payments it was owed. An investigation was launched in 2008 when Pearl requested a refund check for a tenant’s security deposit. But the bar noticed that there was no record that the tenant ever paid a deposit.
Also see:
Recorder: “Calif. Bar Staffer Stole $675,000 Over 8 Years, Says State AG”
