Dive Brief:
- The chief counsel and compliance officer of a consulting firm used fake outside counsel invoices to wire money to himself and pay bills, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleges in an indictment announced this week.
- Tadashi Dumas of Brooklyn is accused of using deceptive wiring instructions in half a dozen falsified invoices in 2021 to steal more than $200,000 from his employer, a consulting firm whose name the DA didn’t disclose.
- “The very person tasked with ensuring his employer’s compliance with laws and regulations broke them time after time to line his pockets at the company’s expense,” said Bragg.
Dive Insight:
Dumas created two invoices to pay $60,500 to an outside law firm but the money went instead to the University of Pennsylvania to cover tuition costs he incurred.
The invoices, the DA’s office said, “included wiring instructions that caused his employer to unknowingly pay for his tuition.”
He followed up with a $30,000 reimbursement request to his employer for a management class he took at the university, which he didn’t complete, according to the DA.
He submitted another invoice, for $8,995, to pay for more outside legal work but had the money wired to a custom publisher for a self-sponsored article he had written about himself. And later in the year he submitted four invoices totaling $113,722.50 for more outside law firm work in which he had the money wired to himself.
“Dumas intentionally submitted falsified invoices to his employer which purported to be for payment to outside counsel, but instead contained fraudulent wiring instructions and reference numbers that would divert the funds,” the DA said.
Dumas couldn’t be reached for comment. Bragg is the prosecutor who has brought criminal charges against Donald Trump for allegedly making payments to a porn actress to keep reports of their affair out of the news prior to the 2016 presidential election.
