Toni Ann Branca, 42, was a loyal customer at Victoria’s Secret, but the problem was that she was far less loyal to her employer, Apple. Branca is accused of buying considerable amounts of merchandize from the lingerie business as part of a $243,000 embezzlement scheme. This proved the one secret that she could not take after the charges on a company credit card were detected by Apple.
It was her appetite that was even more impressive than her recklessness. She worked as an Administrative Assistant and it was not until the company spotted the rather incongruous Victoria Secret purchases that they realized that something was obviously wrong. This is not normally the type of purchase found on an Apple American Express.
She would submit multiple requests for reimbursement and charged up $110,000 in retail spending. She reportedly paid back $95,000 prior to her sentencing.
OMG, she expensed VS?
If she was going to go down in flames for lingerie, why go for the ordinary Victoria’s Secret in everyone’s drawer? If you’re going to be tempted, aim higher for Agent Provocateur. Never be ordinary.
She should ask Trump to pardon her. Somehow there is relevance there.
Not really.
mespo – even though Apple thinks it is a government, it is not yet. Trump does not have the power to pardon its ex-employees.
pls go take your TDS meds. not everything can be connected to the President
Is she adverse to wearing the same outfit twice? Or is this all in edible panties? We need a runway show of her in her outfits. A headshot just will not do it this time, JT. 😉
Larceny and Old Lace
Very good !!!
Pragraph repeated twice…typo!!
It was her appetite that was even more impressive than her recklessness. She worked as an Administrative Assistant and it was not until the company spotted the rather incongruous Victoria Secret purchases that they realized that something was obviously wrong.
Not only did she steal money, she also stole my heart, while wearing a revealing black lace Teddy.
Sounds like the symptoms of bipolar disorder: reckless behavior and out of control spending. I wonder if her attorney argued for a mitigation in sentencing due to mental illness.
I had the same thought.
Clearly she has some sort of disorder, and in light of that the three years jailtime seems excessive to me.
Though the Law 360 article does not come out and say that she had a mental illness, her attorney said, “We were disappointed by the sentence and believe Ms. Branca’s personal situation warranted a more lenient result,” Quraishi said. “There is no question how this matter would have been handled had it not been referred for prosecution by a $900 billion company.”
This seems very sad for Ms. Branca, particularly if this is a first offense and she is suffering from bipolar disorder. We truly have courts of commerce these days, which is frightening for the common person.
I think that for some time now sentencing overall has become harsher and this is reflected in our obscene rate of incarceration.
wildbill – I would add the caveat that this is not so in CA. Due to the emptying of our jails, it is increasingly difficult to get anyone to serve jail time at all. Many crimes are not even prosecuted as not worth the effort.
Wildbill and L2 – It strikes me that many criminals in jail engaged in acts where it was obvious they were going to get caught. Going to jail was a foregone conclusion in so many instances, I cannot understand why they would go through with it.
There seems to be an element of self-destructive behavior to some crimes.
Perhaps she did suffer from some sort of compulsion. One cannot imagine how she thought lingerie expenses would go unquestioned, unless there was a long history of no one going through line items. It’s not like she could pass it off as a staff gift.
I do agree that from my perspective, sentencing in general seems capricious, especially when compared between states. Sometimes, people serve less time for murder than they do for other crimes, or parole gets them out the revolving door.