Woman admits stealing $2.3M to play lottery

Bookkeeper at doctor's office spent $6K a day on tickets

RIVERHEAD, New York (AP) -- A former bookkeeper for a doctor's office pleaded guilty Wednesday to stealing more than $2.3 million from her employer to buy lottery tickets.

Annie Donnelly, 38, of Farmingville, New York, spent as much as $6,000 a day playing lotto and scratch-off lottery games, prosecutors said.

She faces four to 12 years in prison for stealing the money from her employers, Great South Bay Surgical Associates.

Donnelly, who is being held in lieu of $150,000 bail, also will have to repay the money. She is charged with second-degree grand larceny.

"She obviously had a gambling problem," said Donna Planty, assistant district attorney. "She appeared to be caught up in the high of winning."

Investigators believe Donnelly may have won jackpots of $5,000 or even $25,000, but never enough to cover the amount stolen overall, Planty said.

Defense attorney George Vlachos declined to speak with reporters. A telephone call to the employer was not immediately returned.

Planty said that between June 2002 and November 2005, Donnelly wrote company checks for cash, petty cash, or checks payable to herself and falsely listed them as payments to vendors associated with the medical office.

She used the money to "feed her pathological addiction," said Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota.
The average check was for less than $3,000, and Donnelly wrote them in oddly numbered amounts to avoid being caught, prosecutors said. She also would "move money around" to different accounts to elude discovery.

Prosecutors said that in the first year Donnelly stole $41,261 and that the thefts increased each year, with nearly $1.4 million stolen in 2005.

I still say that embezzlers should be charged per incident not as one. $2.3 million is how many bank robberies? how many individual checks did she write? Each time she did that she had intent and when she went into work that day she had planning. True it's a non-violent crime but it's still a crime and she started the first year she was employed there.

And how in the hell is she going to repay $2.3 million? First of all, during the time she's in prison she either won't have to or won't be able to pay. When she gets out, what kind of job will she get? Probably won't pay very well. Usually they are given very small repayment amounts, like $50 a month. She would be dead, her great, great grandkids would be dead and would still owe most of it even if the 3rd and 4th generations were to pay. Not counting interest.

Goes to show that companies STILL don't have procedures in place to catch these theives.