ST. CHARLES COUNTY — A Wentzville woman falsified her timecard for years, allowing her to embezzle more than $49,700 from her employer and use the company credit card to buy personal items, prosecutors say.
Lynn Whitehead, 56, was charged Monday with two counts of stealing and one count of fraudulent debit or credit card use.
Prosecutors allege that Whitehead, a payroll specialist for an unnamed St. Charles County company from 2019 to 2022, paid herself for an additional 136 hours of vacation and bereavement time off, even though she was actually working during that time. Whitehead was allowed either overtime or her salary coefficient, but not both, if she worked more than 80 hours during her two-week pay period.
Payroll records show at least 28 times that Whitehead paid herself both overtime and her salary coefficient, according to prosecutors. In total, she embezzled more than $49,700 from the company.
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Whitehead also used the company’s credit card to buy grocery items, office supplies and alcohol for her personal use. In total, she fraudulently purchased more than $9,100 worth of merchandise, according to court records.
She concealed the credit card purchases by “coding those purchases under the wrong account or paying the credit card balance with petty cash checks,” prosecutors said.
Court records do not indicate how the company discovered either of Whitehead’s schemes, but police say that in an interview Whitehead admitted to stealing only 40 hours of vacation time and “treated the stealing like a bonus.”
She also denied responsibility for the extra overtime and vacation pay, blaming it on a technical “error.” The alcohol and groceries were delivered to her employer, she told investigators.
Whitehead, who has not been arrested and does not have an attorney listed in electronic court records, is scheduled to make her first court appearance on Friday, Oct. 25.
