A former branch manager for Randstad North America, an international staffing firm in Sandy Springs, Georgia, has been sentenced to serve 5 years, 1 month in federal prison on charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. In addition, she has been ordered to pay $286,388.37 in restitution.
Cynthia Whitehead, 44, of Atlanta, Georgia, was employed by Randstad from 2004 to 2007. Her position gave her access to corporate records, including personal identifiers of former employees and the mechanism for paying wages. According to her guilty plea in July of this year, Whitehead reactivated the employment status of morethan a dozen former employees in the company’s data system, made entries which falsely showed that these former employees were currently working for Randstad clients, arranged for the payment of their wages, and accessed the company’s payroll accounts to collect those wages for herself.
Over a 3-year period, Whitehead embezzled approximately $300,000.