Convicted Aspen embezzler arrested in Boulder | News

A woman convicted of embezzling nearly $2 million from an Aspen clothing store in the mid-1990s is facing 63 felony charges on the Front Range in connection with allegations that she embezzled at least $400,000 from an environmental consulting firm.

Lafayette police in Boulder County arrested Lynda Mae Fratis, 60, of Longmont, on Oct. 5, according to court records. She was released on the same date after posting a $10,000 cash bond.

Fratis last appeared in Boulder County District Court on Oct. 25, where she waived counsel on the charges.

Judge Elizabeth Brodsky set a preliminary hearing for December 9. Fratis, represented by Boulder attorney Larry Mertes, waived her right to hold the hearing within 35 days of the filing of the charges.

According to a Sept. 30 arrest affidavit written by a Lafayette Police Department officer, Fratis told authorities she began stealing money “during Covid” with plans to pay back her employer. Fratis worked for the company about fifteen years ago, most recently as an accountant and office manager.

“It was just everything, and I was going to pay the money back, but it just snowballed and snowballed,” Fratis told police who interviewed her on August 26 at a hospital in Lafayette where she was admitted after her employer had been charged with theft. of the company. The interview was part of the police investigation into the embezzlement allegations.

Fratis’ arrest came more than 25 years after the late Pitkin County Judge JE DeVilbiss sentenced her on March 1, 1999, to three concurrent 24-year prison terms for stealing $1.7 million from the Boogie’s clothing store, which had been in business for more than three decades in Aspen on the ground floor below the restaurant of the same name.

During the hearing, DeVilbiss threw out victim and business owner Leonard “Boogie” Weinglass for calling Fratis a curse after giving a victim impact statement to the court. Weinglass later apologized for his comments, saying his animosity toward Fratis got the better of him.

The conviction was part of a plea deal between Fratis and prosecutors, who dismissed eight of the 11 charges against her. In return, Fratis pleaded guilty to three Class 3 felonies for theft over $15,000 and agreed to pay restitution of $1,792,360.72 at the rate of $10 per month while she was in prison.

Like the Aspen embezzlement case, Fratis may have committed the crimes in the Lafayette case because she oversaw her employer’s corporate books.

As a bookkeeper at Boogie’s Clothing, Fratis asked authorized personnel to pre-sign checks for suppliers. She would then remove the seller’s name and replace it with her name. Fratis also manipulated the store’s receipts to show a lower amount of money than was actually rung up that day, and pocketed the difference.

Meanwhile, the owner of the environmental consulting firm, believing that the company should have made a profit with more sales, had their accounting firm audit the books. The investigation revealed that “the company’s bookkeeper and office manager has been stealing the company’s money for the past three to four years,” the affidavit said, citing statements from the accountant who contacted authorities after discovering the scheme had discovered.

Control over the company’s books also allowed Fratis to change invoice amounts after customers had paid the original invoice amount. An example of this is that the company accepts payment of $2,000 from a customer on an invoice that shows that amount. Fratis then manipulated the invoice to show it was $300, deposited that money into the company’s credit card account and took the rest of the money – $1,700 – for himself.

The accountant initially contacted Lafayette authorities on August 14 to report the alleged falsification of invoices. At the time, the accountant estimated the amount stolen was $135,000.

The accountant contacted police for a second time on August 21 to report that she had learned that Fratis had forged checks, made out to her, from a hands-off co-owner of the company who was suffering from dementia, according to the affidavit. With the new information, the auditor estimated that Fratis had embezzled approximately $388,000, the affidavit said. The company Fratis had worked for since 2008 or 2009 also fired her that day.

On August 28, the auditor reported that the amount had increased to $419,000 “as of today” as more thefts had been discovered, “and the amount is likely to increase.”

Prosecutors in the 20th Judicial District filed one charge of felony theft and 62 charges of identity theft on Oct. 25. The identity theft offenses represent any transaction Fratis allegedly completed using unauthorized signatures.

The violations date back to October 2019, before COVID-19 was declared an international pandemic in March 2020, and lasted as late as July, according to charging documents.

It was unclear whether the employer was aware of Fratis’ past in Aspen when she was hired. During the investigation, the accountant learned of Fratis’ decades-old embezzlement case in Aspen through an Internet search.

The author of the affidavit said he asked the accountant “why (the company) hired Fratis if she has a history of employee theft, to which (the accountant) replied, ‘Good question.’”

According to the Lafayette officer’s statement, another co-owner of the business said Fratis “had a habit of always paying for everyone’s drinks when she went out with friends and that she and (her wife) went on a cruise about two years ago got married and Fratis paid for each wedding attendee’s cruise.”

The interview took place at a hospital in Lafayette, where Fratis was admitted for mental health issues after her employer fired her, according to the affidavit. Police interviewed Fratis when she was admitted to the hospital.

Similarly, Fratis told the Aspen Daily News in a 2002 interview that she used the money she stole from the Boogie’s store to finance a lifestyle that required not only herself but also her friends every night included a dinner in Aspen. She also used the ill-gotten gains to make twice-yearly trips to Hawaii. She called her spending “an addiction to a lifestyle I started living and couldn’t stop.”

More than three years into her sentence and after filing a motion for reconsideration, Fratis appeared before DeVilbiss again on July 9, 2002, asking for leniency and a lighter sentence. She and her Denver attorney said she was eligible for a reduced sentence because she came to terms with her crimes and rehabilitated herself, and that she was a model prisoner.

“Keep me on a tight leash,” Fratis told the judge The Aspen Daily News reported at the time. Weinglass also attended the hearing. ‘I won’t let you down. I won’t let Boogie down, and I won’t let my family down.”

The reduced sentence made her eligible for parole in 2005; She was released that summer, according to court records.