Ex-Bookkeeper Who Scammed $600K Out Of Restaurants Gets 28 Months

CHICAGO — A former bookkeeper at two Chicago restaurants who admitted to funneling more than $600,000 from those businesses to herself over a six-year period was sentenced to just more than two years in prison Tuesday, according to federal authorities. Renee M. Johnson, 61, had pleaded guilty to mail fraud in July stemming from the embezzlement, and she also was ordered to pay $604,113 in restitution, the U.S. attorney's office said in a statement.

According to prosecutors, Johnson wrote hundreds of unauthorized checks between 2011 and 2017 from accounts belonging to One Off Hospitality, where she worked as a bookkeeper. The company owns several Chicago bars and restaurants, including West Loop eateries Blackbird and Avec.

It was those two businesses that sustained the biggest financial losses from Johnson's actions, authorities said. She used the misappropriated money to pay personal expenses, such as credit card bills and mortgages on Chicago real estate, according to prosecutors.

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As part of her scheme, Johnson would make phony entries in One Off's books in order to hide the wrongful payments, often cutting checks to a personal creditor and then erasing the entry in the company's system, prosecutors said. In some cases, she would write a check to cover a personal expense and then quickly write a new check with the same check number to pay for a legitimate company cost, the feds added.

“Renee Johnson cooked the books of her employer and stole over $600,000 for over six years,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sunil R. Harjani wrote in the sentencing memo. “Johnson abused the trust and discretion that was given to her by One Off.”

In August 2017, a One Off accountant helping to set up a new bookkeeping system at the company's restaurants was the first to discover possible wrongdoing by Johnson. Authorities arrested and charged her in April of this year.

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