Former Bilotta Kitchen & Home bookkeeper Susana Rivera has been sentenced to prison for three years and ordered to pay restitution of $643,077 that a prosecutor says the company is unlikely to ever see.
U.S. District Judge Vincent L. Briccetti also ordered Rivera on March 7 to participate in drug and mental health programs while incarcerated and to serve three years of supervision after she is released.
Rivera, 41, pled guilty to wire fraud for embezzling funds beginning one month after Bilotta hired her in 2019 as director of accounting and human resources at $80,000 a year.
Bilotta is a second-generation family-run enterprise based in Mamaroneck and with showrooms in Greenwich, Connecticut, Mount Kisco and New York City.
Rivera devised three schemes.
She diverted $453,575 to fake vendors and used the funds to pay for luxuries such as plastic surgery and payments for an Alfa Romeo and a BMW.
She placed more than 500 charges on company credit cards totaling $177,503 for jewelry, beauty treatments, travel and payments on the Alfa Romeo and a Corvette. When the bank suspected fraud, she posed as one of Bilotta’s owners and got the bank to lift restrictions on the account.
She paid nearly $3,000 in personal Con Edison bills directly from one of the company’s bank accounts.
Attorney Elizabeth K. Quinn of Federal Defenders of New York Inc. attributed Rivera’s behavior to a lifetime of chronic violence and emotional trauma: physically abusive parents and lovers, exposure to prevalent crime in public housing in the Bronx, rape when she was 13, attempted suicide at 15, drug abuse, unplanned pregnancies, and the removal of her children from her custody by New York City Administration for Children’s Services.
She secretly married the man she had dated as a teen when he was in prison for attempted murder and continued the relationship after he was released. He allegedly abused her emotionally and physically, and when he learned of her embezzlements he blackmailed her into putting him on Bilotta’s payroll.
“Feeling increasingly hopeless,” Quinn states in a sentencing memorandum, “Ms. Rivera stopped caring about her conduct and began spending money on herself through beauty treatments and luxury items.”
When her husband threatened to expose the embezzlement, Quinn states, Rivera felt her situation was hopeless and she “went off the rails” and began spending money “to buy happiness.”
A psychologist reported that Rivera “is inexplicitly drawn to men who repeatedly physically assault, emotionally abuse and financially drain her. … She often finds herself mired in a repetitive cycle of violence with her romantic partner. She breaks free by finding a new partner but quickly learns that her new partner is eerily similar to the one she left behind. ”
Quinn also noted that despite Rivera’s toxic relationships and continual setbacks, she managed to pull herself out of poverty, get a college degree in business administration while raising young children, and repeatedly assumed the role of family breadwinner.
She thrived while in custody at the Westchester County Jail, holding two jobs and keeping up with mental health appointments and psychotropic medication.
Quinn recommended a prison sentence of less than the 41 to 51 months called for in federal sentencing guidelines.
Assistant U.S. Attorney James McMahon recommended a prison sentence within the guidelines.
For 21 months, he states in a sentencing memorandum, Rivera systematically stole from her employer.
She used purloined funds on frivolous things, like plastic surgery and luxury cars, and not on rent, groceries or giving her children a better education.
She abused the trust of an employer that like many small companies has few internal accounting controls and relies on the integrity of their employees.
She flaunted her thefts, posing on social media with the items she bought.
She falsely blamed her husband for her thefts and lied to her psychologist.
She has a long criminal history dating back to when she was 15. Each of her five children at one time had a court order protecting them from her.
She repeatedly failed to comply with court directives. Even after she pleaded guilty and was awaiting sentencing, for instance, she “callously and repeatedly failed to appear for her presentence interview.”
“Multiple arrests, failure to comply with her curfew more then 20 times, positive drug tests, facially false excuses and general lack of cooperation,” McMahon states, “all show that the defendant simply does not care what the court says.”
