A Tewksbury woman, identified as Joanne Dinoto (also known as Joanne Mara), aged 49, has been handed a sentence of over five years in prison by U.S. Senior District Court Judge Denise Casper.
This comes after she pleaded guilty in March 2023 to a range of charges, including bank fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and filing a false tax return.
The charges stem from her elaborate embezzlement scheme, where she stole over $1.8 million from her employer, a flooring company in Acton, spanning from October 2008 to April 2020.
Dinoto employed various tactics, such as falsely inflating her compensation, using the corporate credit card for personal expenses, and forging checks drawn on her employer's account.
To conceal her fraudulent activities, she manipulated her employer's accounting records. In addition to her prison sentence, Dinoto is mandated to undergo three years of supervised release and pay a restitution amounting to $2,195,592.
Furthermore, it was revealed that Dinoto, during her illicit activities, managed to collect unemployment benefits from the state Department of Unemployment Assistance, using her authentic Social Security number.
This occurred while she was concurrently employed full-time at a lighting company in Wilmington, under a fabricated Social Security number. Prosecutors noted that between 2015 and 2020, Dinoto failed to report over $1 million of embezzled funds on her federal income tax returns.
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