Farmington Woman Convicted In Embezzlement Scheme

The former controller of the Town and Country Club in St. Paul has pleaded guilty and been convicted in a million dollar embezzlement scheme.

Julie Ann Lee was convicted after pleading guilty on Monday on one count of wire fraud and one count of filing a false tax return, according to a release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis.

She had been originally indicted in August on wire fraud and charges for filing false tax returns.

According to the release she made out over  50 checks totaling about $163,000 directly from the club's bank accounts, and is alleged to have stolen about $250,000 in cash and deposited it in a personal account. She according to the report use $600,000 in funds to pay for her personal credit cards. As the pleas came out that number was increased to $764,932.

The report also says that she used embezzled funds to pay for personal expenses that included personal travel, home improvements, mortgage payments, a 2013 Dodge Challenger, a 2015 GMC pickup, a motorcycle, a recreational vehicle and 81 acres of land in northern Minnesota.

To help try to hide things, Lee took advances on the country club's line of credit at Alliance Bank. The club then was left without the money to make its quarterly payroll tax payments to the Internal Revenue Service. She also filed false quarterly payroll returns with the IRS – sometimes late – that understated the payroll tax liability. And allegedly made payments late.

That resulted in the country club's paying the IRS more than $300,000 in interest and penalties.