Honolulu accounting firm employee admits stealing $250,000

A former employee of a Honolulu accounting firm pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court Wednesday to one count each of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft for using clients’ personal and financial information to steal more than $250,000.

Crystal Carvalho-Pakchong, 35, faces a mandatory two-year prison term for the aggravated identity theft plus up to 30 years for the wire fraud at sentencing in April. As part of her plea deal with the government, Carvalho-Pakchong has agreed to forfeit to the government $63,646 and pay restitution in the same amount.

A federal grand jury returned an indictment in May charging Carvalho-Pakchong with 50 counts of wire fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft in stealing $250,086 from the accounting firm’s clients to pay her expenses and debts and those of her family.

Carvalho-Pakchong told U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard L. Puglisi that she was working as a tax processor assistant when she committed her crimes. She admitted stealing money from clients’ accounts at Bank of Hawaii, First Hawaiian Bank and Fidelity Investments by opening accounts at banks and brokerage houses in the clients’ names and transferring money into the new accounts or to her own credit card and brokerage accounts.

She admitted carrying out the scheme from sometime before August 2016 to Feb. 27 last year, one day before FBI agents questioned her as a target of an identity theft investigation. Court records did not name her employer at the time.