Sanders's first time to be charged with creatively illegal account management took place in March 2012 -- although her crimes were said to have taken place earlier. According to an arrest affidavit accessed by the Boulder Daily Camera, she served as a bookkeeper for several Burger King franchises from June 2008 to December 2011 via a gig with a company called Gunbarrel Management Services.
After Sanders left Gunbarrel, her boss made a surprising discovery -- several checks made out in her name by a Burger King outlet in Montrose, and a payroll check from another BK in Grand Junction also sporting her moniker.These finds prompted an internal investigation that led them to one Marie Sanchez, who'd received more than $9,600 in checks from the franchises.
Did Sanchez get in big trouble? Absolutely not -- because she didn't exist. She appears to have been invented by Sanders to justify the existence of the checks to the computer system, but they were made out in Sanders's name.
The company is said to have given Sanders a chance to repay the money by March. When she didn't manage to do so, the firm called the cops. Hence, her arrest on suspicion of felony theft plus a number of forgery counts.
Judging by the latest affidavit obtained by the Daily Camera, this little bump in the road doesn't appear to have had much of an impact on Sanders.
The paper notes that she managed to land a new job shortly after the Burger King theft tale broke, signing on with Longmont's World Wide Moving Systems the next month. But there was to be no happy ending. On Halloween of last year, she was given the heave-ho from her new gig, where she'd handled accounting and human services tasks, reportedly because of insubordination and too many absences.
Still, other alleged sins were far more serious -- like the $7,500 in cash and checks she's accused of not depositing, and nearly $10,000 in payroll checks she appears to have written to herself.
And that's not to mention $19,000 in unemployment benefits she was paid under a false Social Security number -- a gambit that's prompted a separate investigation by the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.
As of now, Sanders is free on $10,000 bond -- wonder where that came from. But she's expected back in court on May 3.
No telling whether she'll have a new job by then. If someone hires her to watch his money, though, he'll join her in schmuckiness. Here's a larger look at Sanders's mug shot.
More from our Schmuck of the Week archive: "Richard Howard Craft, ex-pastor and current schmuck, sentenced for child porn."
