Florida lawyer discovers his office manager and her husband stole $1M from him: Deputies
Pictured left to right: Donna Waterman, Oliver Waterman | Credit: Brevard County Jail
ROCKLEDGE, Fla. - A trail of fraudulent bank statements landed a Florida paralegal and her husband in jail after the couple stole nearly $1 million from a law firm, deputies said.
Donna Waterman and Oliver Waterman were both arrested by Brevard County deputies after it was discovered they devised a scheme in which they stole thousands of dollars over the course of four years from Donna Waterman's employer.
The situation unfolded when the firm was notified that one of its accounts had insufficient funds. The firm noticed that the bank statement had three transactions to a PayPal account named TRINIBOUNDS2, arrest records show. The firm contacted the office manager, Donna Waterman, who called in sick that day and claimed she had no knowledge about the situation. She called in sick the next two days before requesting to meet with the firm owner in person – to which he refused.
An investigation revealed that the couple organized a scheme to defraud Donna Waterman's employer by transferring funds from the law group's bank accounts to their own personal PayPal and bank accounts. Detectives discovered that the TRINIBOUNDS2 PayPal account belonged to Oliver Waterman.
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The couple made hundreds of transactions, many of which occurred multiple times a day, nearly every month, for the last three years.
The transactions went undetected for nearly four years because the bank statements provided to the law firm were doctored to omit all the fraudulent transactions, deputies said. Donna Waterman would give the law firm the altered bank statements, which made it appear that all the books were balanced when in fact, they were not. She also altered the numbers in the firm's Quickbooks account.
In 2022, detectives noticed that Oliver Waterman began initiating fraudulent PayPal transfers from his wife's work email. A subpoena issued for the couple's bank accounts showed a combined balance of $1,137,995.
The couple used the stolen money to go on cruises and to gamble at different casinos, arrest records show.
Both were arrested on several criminal charges and booked into the Brevard County Jail.