By DAN CROWLEY
Daily Hampshire Gazette
NORTHAMPTON — Lori A. Towne told jurors Monday that as she wrote tens of thousands of dollars in company checks to pay for her personal bills, she had approval from her boss for every one of those checks.
Towne, the former bookkeeper and business manager of SealRyt Corp., said company president Mark Wilkinson knew about and gave her permission to use company money to pay her credit card, telephone and car insurance bills, as well as write checks to herself for years, including before she married in 2005.
“He authorized me to do that because I was a single parent and it was just his way of giving me an extra benefit,” Towne, 51, of Easthampton, told jurors in Hampshire Superior Court from the stand.
“He said, ‘I trust you, just write ’em, just sign the checks.’ That was our agreement. He wanted to make sure they were just expensed anywhere so the bottom line would look good,” she said during four hours of testimony.
SealRyt Corp. develops, patents and manufactures alternative sealing devices in the fluid and gas-sealing industry. The company was in the mill district at 150 Pleasant St. in Easthampton before relocating to Westfield in 2011.
Prosecutors allege that, between 2002 and 2010, Towne, formerly of Westhampton, stole more than $200,000 from SealRyt, using company checks to pay three personal credit card accounts, personal car insurance and phone bills, as well as herself. She is charged with six counts each of larceny over $250 by single scheme, check forgery, and uttering false checks.
A single count of embezzlement by broker was thrown out in court Monday by Judge Mary-Lou Rup at the request of one of Towne’s lawyers.
Towne’s testimony about her personal use of company checks was in striking contrast to Wilkinson’s account from the stand. Last week, Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Jayme A. Parent presented Wilkinson with more than 200 company checks paid to Towne’s personal accounts. In each case, Wilkinson, of Huntington, said he did not authorize use of the checks, the vast majority of which carried his stamped signature and Towne’s handwritten signature.
He also testified that Towne walked into his office in tears and confessed to stealing thousands of dollars from the company just weeks before his company was to be audited by the Internal Revenue Service in 2010. He had her sign a document attesting to the alleged theft of company funds, but did not immediately tell anyone about it or end Towne’s employment because he needed her to get through the IRS audit, according to his testimony.
On Monday, Towne gave a very different account of what happened. She said she was not aware of the nature of the document she signed in Wilkinson’s office — and that she never walked into his office in tears and confessed to stealing money. Rather, Wilkinson called her into his office to sign a document she didn’t read, Towne said.
Towne said it was only when she was called into his office in May 2011 and presented with that signed confession that she realized what she had signed months earlier. A company attorney, and a few other employees, including Wilkinson’s son, Seth Wilkinson, were present in the room.
“After reading it, I was sick to my stomach,” Towne recalled of the meeting.
She also told jurors that Wilkinson told her that he was “going to destroy” her for her alleged theft of company money.
Asked by defense attorney Rachel Lynn Weber of the Committee for Public Counsel Services what her reaction was at the time, Towne got emotional on the stand and replied, in a trembling voice, “Shocked. Stunned. Scared to death.”
During cross-examination, Parent presented Towne with more documentary evidence of her use of company funds to pay her personal bills, including credit card accounts in her husband’s name. She admitted on the stand to using the money to pay personal bills and altering SealRyt’s books so that expense payments and amounts were assigned to different vendors in the company’s accounting system, though allegedly at Wilkinson’s direction.
She testified that she was once instructed to shred the time sheets of an employee and was asked by Wilkinson to write off a $2,000 payment he had made toward her wedding reception at the Delaney House in Holyoke as a conference expense. Wilkinson also had written checks to Towne and allowed her to write checks for herself at times with company money, Towne told jurors. She testified that she wasn’t the only employee who received monetary benefits outside of payroll and that it was Wilkinson’s way of taking care of his employees.
“When I would go on vacation, he would say ‘just write yourself a check for $500 and bring me back a bottle of Crown Royal when you return,’?” Towne said. “He would write a check to me, and I would have to find receipts.”
Also testifying Monday was Robert M. Harrison, a certified fraud examiner in the Northwestern district attorney’s office’s financial crimes unit, who was asked, in large part, to verify the company’s financial documents presented as evidence in the case.
The trial resumes with Towne’s continued testimony on Tuesday.
Dan Crowley can be reached at [email protected].
