Now-former HP finance manager Shelbee Szeto has been sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to forfeit more than 250 luxury items after she blew $5m on herself using company credit cards.
The list of stuff [PDF] she fraudulently bagged includes a 2020 Tesla sedan, a 2021 Porsche sport utility vehicle, 46 Chanel handbags, and 16 Rolex watches.
Szeto, 30, of Fremont, California pleaded guilty to wire fraud, money laundering, and related tax charges in March. She worked for HP, first as an executive assistant and then as a finance planning manager, from about August 2017 until June 2021, according to US prosecutors.
As part of her job, Szeto was responsible for paying HP vendors, and as such, she had multiple company credit cards that were supposed to be used to make payments on HP’s behalf — not for personal expenses.
However, instead of using these cards to pay HP’s bills, we’re told she set up bogus PayPal, Stripe, and Square profiles that were under Szeto’s control but looked like legitimate merchant accounts. Szeto then funneled at least $4.8 million in fraudulent payments from the HP credit cards to the bogus accounts and bought hundreds of…
