By Julie Manganis
MARBLEHEAD — A Marblehead woman has been indicted on charges that she stole more than $500,000 from her employer over a five-year period while working there as a bookkeeper.
And it's not the first time Kimberlee Mastronardi has faced charges of stealing from an employer.
Despite a record that includes a 1998 case in which she was convicted of stealing more than $100,000 from a Salem business, Mastronardi, 50, of 195 West Shore Drive, Marblehead, was hired to handle the books for Bartlett and Stedman Plumbing Co., also in Marblehead, in May 2004.
Over the next five years, until she was caught in March, Mastronardi padded her salary, mainly by submitting inflated time records to the payroll processing service the small Marblehead plumbing firm had hired, according to authorities.
Police and prosecutors say that over time, all of those extra hours boosted her bottom line dramatically.
The $23-an-hour bookkeeper's 2008 W-2 form showed a total annual income of $189,578, according to a police report — nearly four times what she would normally have earned based on her hourly wage.
Mastronardi was charged before this year's tax filing deadline; it's not known whether she ever filed an income tax return with that W-2.
Prosecutors and police say that in the time Mastronardi worked for the company, she embezzled a total of $531,606 from the business through the payroll scheme, additional money funneled to her 401K because of the higher salary, and by using company accounts to pay two credit card bills for her daughter totaling more than $85,000.
The scheme unraveled earlier this year when company owner Richard Steadman began receiving numerous calls from vendors who had not been paid — a task that was part of Mastronardi's job. The company began an internal investigation and in late March, went to Marblehead police with their concerns.
Mastronardi had avoided detection, according to police reports, by regularly showing Steadman the time cards filled out for each of the firm's employees. He would approve them, but then Mastronardi would allegedly submit the data online to the payroll processing service, adding on average 10 hours a week to her own time sheet as well as extra overtime and vacation pay.
Police contacted Mastronardi in March and asked her to come in for an interview, a request she initially granted. However, she never showed up for a scheduled meeting with detectives. Instead, police learned, she and her husband went to the National Grand Bank and withdrew $8,000 in cash. Then, Mastronardi called the detectives and told them that she had gotten nervous and that she was waiting for a lawyer to call her back, adding that she didn't know why the police wanted to talk to her.
She was arrested on March 24. Shortly after her arrest, she posted $5,000 in cash bail and has been free ever since.
It's not entirely clear where the money went. Mastronardi's husband, Ronald, has a history involving abuse of prescription painkillers and in 2002 was sentenced to 21รขÑ2 years in jail. During a search of the couple's home, police found pills that led to a separate investigation of the husband.
Public campaign finance records show that Mastronardi contributed a total of $400 to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008.
But in court papers, Mastronardi now says she is broke and is asking for a court-appointed lawyer, a request denied by a Lynn District Court judge earlier this month.
Mastronardi told the judge that she and her husband now struggle to support themselves solely on Ronald Mastronardi's disability check. Her husband, who in 2002 blamed his prescription drug fraud on lingering pain from a car accident, collects Social Security Disability Income for an undisclosed ailment. She also told the judge that she had tried to withdraw money from her 401K account but had been turned down.
In 1998, Mastronardi was arrested by Salem police on charges that she stole approximately $100,000 from Karmin Door Co., where she had also worked as a bookkeeper for two years. Police at the time said the company had discovered that Mastronardi was skimming from payments to the business, cashing checks for payments of up to $3,000 and keeping the money for herself.
She had also been found guilty in a 2002 Lynn case involving improper use of a credit card.
Her background was not known when she was hired by the Marblehead firm.
Robert Weiner, a lawyer representing Bartlett and Steadman, said yesterday that the firm is taking steps to prevent similar incidents in the future, including hiring a new payroll service. Weiner said the theft had a "significant" impact on the small business.
