Ex-employee of Gallagher unit sentenced for fraud

A former accounting specialist who worked at the Ridgefield Park, New Jersey office of Risk Placement Services Inc., a unit of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., has been sentenced to 27 months in prison for embezzling $900,000 from her employer.

Violeta McGough, 57, of Bergenfield, New Jersey, had previously pled guilty before U.S. District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo to a charge of one count of wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney of the District of New Jersey Craig Carpenito said in a statement Monday.

From 2008 through 2015, Ms. McGough allegedly made “numerous fraudulent accounting entries to steal funds that her employer…collected as insurance premiums” on behalf of a U.K.-based insurance syndicate, the statement said.

Ms. McGough is alleged to have repeatedly used her access to the brokerage’s books to “divert a portion of those payments to her personal use,” the statement said.

Ms. McGough then “disguised the stolen funds as reimbursed premiums for cancelled policies” and deposited the funds into a bank account for an unidentified individual who “supposedly worked for a premium financing company,” the statement said.

The bulk of funds were then transmitted back to Ms. McGough’s bank account, according to the statement.

In addition to the prison sentence, Judge Arleo sentenced Ms. McGough to three years of supervised release, the statement said.

Gallagher had acquired Metcom Excess, the New Jersey-based wholesale broker where Ms. McGough worked in March 2015.