Stealing From the Boy Scouts of America Will Get You Two Years in Federal Prison

By Robert Wilonsky Tue., Jan. 26 2010 at 11:45 AM

Categories: Crime

From April 1985 till May of '08, Barbara Nestel was a secretary for the Boy Scouts of America. Among her duties: reconciling financial accounts and processing payments for the National Catholic Committee on Scouting for merchandise and expenses. Which is how she could defraud the Boy Scouts out of $350,000, a crime to which she admitted in October of last year after she was indicted on one count of wire fraud by a federal grand jury.

The U.S. Attorney's Office just sent word that Nestel has till March 29 to turn herself into the Bureau of Prisons to begin serving a 24-month sentence, handed down yesterday by U.S. District Judge David C. Godbey. The release also details how Nestel stole from the Boy Scouts, earning her the ultimate demerit badge:

In her employment capacity, Nestel used an electronic point-of-sale terminal to process debit and credit card transactions for customer purchases and refunds. Although she was not entitled to any refunds, Nestel would process or "swipe" her personal debit card through the electronic point-of-sale terminal which submitted the refund request. This process caused a wire transfer of funds from a BSA bank account in Dallas to Nestel's personal bank accounts.

Nestel admitted that she processed at least 500 fraudulent refunds which caused at least 500 unlawful interstate wire transfers to be made from the BSA bank account to her personal bank accounts.

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