Ex-Office Manager Gets House Arrest for Stealing $75K from Law Firm Trust Account
Depressed over her financial problems, a longtime paralegal at a Pennsylvania law firm turned to gambling in an attempt to make ends meet.
That resulted in a gambling addiction that drove office manager Dolores Ann Seber to steal more than $75,000 from the trust account of Byrne Neyhart and Higgins, forging partner John Byrne’s signature on 130 checks she made payable to herself and cashed at a bank branch a block from the firm’s offices in Scranton, the Times-Tribune reports.
She concealed the thefts, which occurred over a 22-month period beginning in January 2008, by making false entries in the firm’s books, the newspaper reports.
An earlier Times-Tribune article says Seber was charged last year in the Lackawanna County case with forgery, access device fraud, theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception and receiving stolen property. However, the current article doesn’t say what charge or charges she was convicted of and includes no comment from Seber or her counsel.
Seber, 51, was sentenced to house arrest of between three and 23 months by Lackawanna County Judge Vito Geroulo, who also banned her from all Pennsylvania casinos and ordered her to repay the law firm.
She worked for Byrne Neyhart for more than 11 years.
