An Atascadero woman who embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from her employer was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years and four months in state prison.
Joy Wilde, 43, pleaded no contest last month to 18 counts of embezzlement, two counts of forgery, and one count of attempted embezzlement.
An investigation found that over three years, Wilde had taken $877,123 from Greg Wiemann Construction while working for the company as a bookkeeper and office manager. She passed 64 fraudulent checks and attempted to pass three others. The owner of the construction company reportedly didn't discover the thefts until July 2019.
According to the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney's Office, Wilde's prison sentence is unusually long for an embezzlement case; however, Judge Jesse Marino highlighted the "outrageously large amount of money" taken by Ms. Wilde and concluded that the decade-long prison sentence was warranted "due to its sheer volume."
