Prosecutor: Warren County bookkeeper pleads guilty in $2 million theft case
A Warren County bookkeeper has pleaded guilty in a theft case totaling more than $2 million, according to the prosecutor’s office.
39-year-old Alisha King pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated theft, two counts of telecommunications fraud and one count of forgery.
King was sentenced to 10-15 years in prison with no opportunity for early release. She was also ordered to pay restitution.
According to the Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell, the crimes took place between Aug. 22, 2018 and Nov. 30, 2023, while King was a bookkeeper for an outdoor lighting company headquartered in Middletown, Ohio.
Prosecutors say King stole money from two franchisees by forging checks payable to herself, and through unauthorized credit card transactions. According to prosecutors, the victim franchisees are in South Carolina and Tennessee and both victims used King’s bookkeeping services as a part of their franchise agreements.
Prosecutors say the collective amount of theft from both victims totaled $2,025,776.96.
According to Fornshell, the theft was first discovered Nov. 27, 2023, when an employee found a check King made out to herself totaling $2,000 from the business checking account of the South Carolina franchise, but that the check was not authorized by any principal of the South Carolina business.
Further investigations found King used access to the franchise’s business account to send unauthorized checks. Specifically, investigators found that between January 1, 2023 and November 30, 2023, King used her access to the South Carolina franchise’s business checking account to initiate online bill payments, sending unauthorized checks to herself totaling $92,350.00.
Middletown police further discovered that between 2018 and 2023, King also used her access to the business credit card account issued to the Tennessee franchise to make unauthorized personal purchases via PayPal, Venmo, and Amazon, and to pay interest accrued on the credit card**, all of which totaled $750,727.45. Investigators also found that during that same time period, King used her access to the South Carolina franchise’s business checking account to initiate bank transfers to make payments toward the Tennessee franchise’s credit card balance, totaling $1,182,699.51.**
According to prosecutors, King purchased items including concert tickets, apparel, beauty products, kitchen products, boating items, rent payments and personal bills.
According to prosecutors, examples of items purchased included Visa gift cards, a Louis Vuitton bag, Air Jordan apparel and shoes, an electric guitar, an Apple watch, a vacuum and countless other items. In total, King made approximately $396,000 in PayPal purchases, $88,000 in Venmo transactions, $198,000 in Amazon purchases, and $66,000 in credit card interest — all funded through unauthorized use of the credit card and subsequently paid off using the victims’ business checking accounts.
“This is the most sizeable internal theft case that our office has prosecuted since I became Warren County Prosecutor,” said Fornshell. “Although King was ordered to pay restitution, given the dollars involved, King could work the rest of her life and not make a dent in what she stole from these victims. For those who say that non-violent offenders should not go to prison, Exhibit 1 against that argument is Alisha King.”
