Pay scheme at city factory ends in arrest By Conor Berry, Berkshire Eagle Staff Article Last Updated: 01/08/2008 03:17:42 AM EST
Tuesday, January 08 PITTSFIELD — A company supervisor accused of using his firm's computerized payroll system to issue fraudulent checks to ex-employees told police that he was trying to help out his former colleagues, most of whom were in the country illegally and were unable to open bank accounts. Ten Latin America immigrants who formerly worked for the Pittsfield-based Sampco Inc. continued to get paid even after their tenures had ended, according to police and prosecutors.
Gustavo Moreta, a longtime employee of Sampco — a national manufacturer of sample and display products for the building industry — admitted to writing 123 fraudulent checks totaling $45,534.09, according to Pittsfield Police.
Moreta, 31, of 110 Madison Ave. was charged with larceny and possession of a forged driver's license. He is being held at the Berkshire County Jail & House of Correction in lieu of $2,500 cash bail or $25,000 bond.
In a statement to Pittsfield Police Detective James M. Roccabruna, Moreta said that he initiated the illegal check-cashing scheme "sometime in 2007." That, according to his statement, is when he began "to edit" the company's computer payroll system.
Advertisement -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I did this so that it would show work hours for employees who longer work for Sampco," Moreta told police. Sampco's human resources department would then create a paycheck, which Moreta would deposit into his Greylock Federal Credit Union checking account, police said. He would either give the ex-employees the whole check or split the money with them, according to case documents filed in Central Berkshire District Court.
None of the 10 former employees — six Mexicans, two Brazilians, one Colombian and one Peruvian — were in the U.S. legally, according to Moreta.
"When they were actually working at Sampco, I would sometimes deposit their paychecks into my account and later give them the money," he said in his police statement. "I did this because they couldn't open a bank account of their own. In return, they would give me $10 or $20."
Moreta, a production supervisor at Sampco, is a native of Ecuador.
Company officials confronted him Friday afternoon with the allegations. That's when Roccabruna and fellow Pittsfield Detective Thomas Bowler arrived at Sampco's 56 Downing Industrial Parkway headquarters to meet with Michael Ryan, the company's owner, and Melissa Pocock, the human resources administrator.
Neither Ryan nor Pocock could be reached for comment last night. But Pocock, in a statement to Pittsfield detectives, said that Moreta was responsible for reviewing employee time sheets and handing out paychecks.
When Moreta was on vacation last month, she said, another employee temporarily took over his duties and allegedly discovered two holiday bonus envelopes made out to former Sampco employees. One employee left the company in June, the other in July.
Pocock went on to say that payroll records indicated that Moreta had manually edited time sheet reports to reflect the phony hours. Of the 123 checks Pocock handed over to police as evidence, all of them were endorsed by Moreta, court records indicated.
After investigators reviewed credit union surveillance images allegedly showing Moreta cashing the checks, detectives arrested him at the Sampco facility on Friday. Moreta was fired from his job of nine years and stripped of his company keys.
According to Roccabruna, Moreta claimed that some of the former employees involved in the check-cashing scheme had been deported from the U.S. but had returned using different names.
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