South Carolina Woman Sentenced To Three Years For Embezzling More Than $2.4 Million Worth Of Computer Equipment From Her Employer

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Jolynn Denise McHone, 45, of Fort Mill, South Carolina, was sentenced late yesterday to three years in prison and two years of supervised release for embezzling more than $2.4 million worth of computer equipment from her employer, announced Andrew Murray, U.S. Attorney for the Western district of North Carolina. U.S. District Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr. also ordered McHone to pay more than $2.4 million in restitution.

Special Agent in Charge John A. Strong, of the FBI Charlotte Field Office, joins U.S. Attorney Murray in making today’s announcement.

According to the filed court documents, from 2006 to 2017, McHone was employed by a Florida-based company as an information technology (IT) procurement manager.  In that capacity, McHone was responsible for negotiating IT equipment purchases and lease agreements with the company’s IT vendors, managing IT equipment and purchases for the company and its subsidiaries throughout the United States, including North Carolina, and managing the company’s IT operating budget.

Court records show that from 2012 to 2017, McHone defrauded her employer by using company funds to order new IT equipment for supposedly legitimate company business, which she had delivered to a company subsidiary located in Concord, North Carolina. McHone intercepted the deliveries of the equipment, then met a co-conspirator in Charlotte, to whom she sold the equipment for cash, often for as little as 60 percent of the retail value of the equipment.  During the relevant time period, McHone admitted that she engaged in dozens of fraudulent IT equipment purchase or lease transactions.  Through this scheme, McHone obtained hundreds of fraudulently-acquired pieces of equipment, and caused losses of more than $2.4 million to the company.

On April 4, 2019, McHone pleaded guilty to wire fraud. McHone will be ordered to report to the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin serving her sentence, upon designation of a federal facility. All federal sentences are served without the possibility of parole.

The FBI investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney William Bozin, of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte, handled the prosecution.