LYNN – Ten months after clearing her name of credit card fraud charges, Kimberlee Mastronardi landed back in court Wednesday charged with stealing from her employer.
Mastronardi, 50, 195 West Shore Drive, #1, Marblehead, pleaded innocent in District Court to a charge of larceny over $250 and was free on $5,000 bail.
She was arrested at her home Tuesday, one day after Bartlett & Steadman Plumbing company owner Richard Steadman told Marblehead Det. Sean Brady that Mastronardi “has been embezzling money for the last five years.”
Steadman, according to a report filed in court by Brady, suspected Mastronardi altered company payroll records each week after submitting them to Steadman for approval and prior to passing the records on to the firm’s payroll service.
Steadman, according to the report, “became suspicious of Mastronardi when she would not produce payroll and other reports that Steadman’s accountant needed.”
He also showed Brady a copy of Mastronardi’s 2008 W-2 income tax form listing $189,578 in wages even though Steadman told police she earned $23 an hour. Lawrence Markell, Mastronardi’s attorney, said he has not seen “any original documents” supporting the charge against Mastronardi.
Police records did not state exact amounts that Mastronardi is charged with stealing and Markell said prosecutors had not mentioned a figure.
Court records show Mastronardi was convicted in 1998 of four counts of larceny, forgery and falsifying books. She received a one year jail sentence that was suspended. She was charged with multiple courts of credit card fraud and identity fraud in 2001. Most of the charges were subsequently dismissed in June 2003 but she pleaded guilty to others and received two-year sentences suspended through June 2008.
?Kimberlee Mastronardi has a long criminal history of fraud, larceny, forgery and credit card misuse,” Brady stated in his report.
She is scheduled to return to court on May 8.
