Guyanese payroll director guilty in Atlanta hospital fraud

Dec 10, 2014 News

Atlanta, US – A federal jury in Atlanta has convicted the former payroll director of Grady Memorial Hospital of stealing more than $480,000 from the hospital.
After a four-day trial, the jury on Dec. 5 convicted Donald Thomas, 55, of six counts of theft, six counts of wire fraud and two counts of bank fraud involving 134 fraudulent transactions. Thomas, formerly of Atlanta, now lives in Plano, Texas.
Thomas served as assistant controller of the Grady Memorial Hospital Corp. from December 1994 to June 2011. Prosecutors said the thefts occurred from January 2008 through June 2011 while Thomas was in charge of the payroll for Grady’s 5,500 employees and had access to the payroll system and employees’ payroll records.
In announcing the verdict, U.S. Attorney Sally Yates said, “Thomas embezzled from a long-standing public institution that provides medical care to the poor and underserved in the Atlanta area and beyond. By its guilty verdict, the jury has held him accountable for stealing from taxpayers and Grady’s patients.”
J. Britt Johnson, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Atlanta office, said “At a time when health care institutions such as Grady Hospital are under the strain to meet the needs of their community, to include those served by publicly funded programs, the criminal actions of former Grady Hospital payroll director Thomas are all that more egregious.”
Thomas is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 25 by U.S. Senior District Judge Charles Pannell Jr. Thomas has asked that he be released on bond pending his sentencing. Thomas’ attorney, Janice Singer-Capek, of Atlanta’s Thompson-Singer, could not be reached for comment.
According to federal prosecutors, Thomas used his access to individual payroll records to fabricate unearned vacation pay and severance pay for employees who had been terminated, prosecutors said. Thomas would then add the fabricated funds to the payroll records of employees who had already left Grady, replacing those terminated employees’ bank accounts with his own personal bank account number, prosecutors said.
In at least two instances, Thomas generated checks made payable to terminated employees whose signatures he forged, then deposited the funds in his own account, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said that Thomas’ thefts were discovered after a terminated employee contacted the hospital to inform them that her 2011 W-2 tax form showed more compensation than she had earned. A subsequent investigation revealed that her payroll records had been altered and additional pay had been paid by the hospital in her name.
Thomas attempted to cover up his crimes by reversing most of the fraudulent changes he had made, but in a few instances, he failed to do so, and, as a result, additional wages and compensation were erroneously added to several employees’ year-end W-2 forms, prosecutors said.
Thomas, who is originally from Guyana, and his wife, Mary Derheimer, sued Grady in 2011 after both were terminated as part of a reduction in force, claiming that the hospital engaged in “race-based manipulation of its personnel policies.”
The couple claimed that Grady had eliminated their jobs because Derheimer is white and she is married to Thomas, a black man. The couple dismissed the suit in 2012 after the FBI began investigating Thomas, who was indicted by a federal grand jury the following year. (dailyreportonline.com)

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