MaryAnnDVC
"Mare", DISing since '99; prefers being tagless
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2001
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Where does anyone come off even attempting to pull this off? And how did a BOOKKEEPER and a SAHD not raise a million red flags with all the money they were throwing around? 
Cumberland woman lived large on embezzled $9 million
Judge Michael A. Silverstein yesterday ordered Angela M. Buckborough and her husband to repay J & J Materials owner John P. Ferreira $16 million -- about twice the amount of damages claimed.
01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, September 23, 2006
BY PHILIP MARCELO
Providence Journal Staff Writer
The quiet, hard-working bookkeeper who came on board as a temp at the construction firm impressed her boss so much that within four months she had been hired full-time and given increasing responsibilities over the company's finances.
But two months later, Angela M. Buckborough cut herself a $650 check from Rehoboth construction supply company J & J Materials -- the first of many fraudulent checks in a massive embezzlement that she admits reached $9 million.
Over six years, the Cumberland resident used the stolen money to buy property in three states, dozens of cars and recreational vehicles, a stable of horses and lavish gifts for her friends and family.
Before her deceit was discovered by her employer in June, the 40-ish mother of two owned a half-million-dollar house in Foster, 10 thoroughbred and quarter horses in Lincoln, a Vermont country estate, a property in Maine, a two-story home in Cumberland, and timeshares in Walt Disney World and the Bahamas.
All of the ill-gotten gains were turned over to J & J Materials owner John P. Ferreira by a judge's order last month.
And yesterday, a Rhode Island Superior Court judge ordered Buckborough, her husband and admitted accomplice Kevin Platt to pay Ferreira an additional $16 million on top of the estimated $2 million worth of personal property and real estate that she turned over to him.
Investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Treasury Department are trying to determine what happened to the remaining $7 million that Buckborough admits to stealing, according to Ferreira's lawyer, Michael A. Kelly.
A federal indictment in the coming months will almost certainly guarantee that Buckborough and Platt will face jail time, said Kelly.
"It was a very cunning and deceitful plan that she had and she covered her tracks very well," he said.
THE FIRST company check Angela Buckborough made to herself paid the rent for the house on Farrell Street, in Cumberland, where she and her husband lived.
It was May 1999 and the couple, returning to Rhode Island in 1998 after a rocky stay in Oregon, was about to be evicted.
With her husband unemployed, Buckborough, who first moved to Cumberland when she was in the seventh grade, was the sole breadwinner in the household.
Hired as a temp at J & J Materials that December, she quickly moved up the company ranks by earning Ferreira's trust.
At her peak, Buckborough was overseeing the finances of four of the companies in Ferreira's multimillion dollar construction and masonry operation.
"She was a steady, consistent worker. She was quiet and kept to herself," Ferreira said yesterday.
She rarely worked with oversight.
"What I would do is in the beginning write checks out of one of the [company] accounts and just deposit them into my personal account," Buckborough said in a court deposition in June. "Starting in 2005, I wrote them out of one account into another company's account, and then I would write myself a check."
The stolen money never stayed in Buckborough's three bank accounts very long, according to her deposition, and when Ferreira's lawyers seized her accounts, they found less than $5,000.
In the winter of 2004, the couple began construction of a log cabin retreat on 100 acres in West Haven, Vt., near the New York border, which they purchased for about $100,000, according to Platt's court deposition.
Now valued at $1.2 million, the house took nine months to build.
By then, the couple and their two children, Daniel, 17, and Brina, 12, had moved into Buckborough's father's house at 16 Sun Valley Drive in Cumberland.
Buckborough contends she made the mortgage payments for her father, Robert, who lived in a retirement home in town, with her own money, and is refusing to turn the house over to Ferreira.
In February 2006, the couple purchased a two-bedroom house at 32 Foster Center Rd. for $490,000, Journal archives show.
Later they would purchase 30 acres of woods in Harrington, Maine, that Platt's parents owned, valued at $30,000.
BEYOND THE REAL ESTATE, Buckborough used the money to shower others with gifts and vacations, saving little for herself, as far as court documents show. She allowed her husband to indulge in firearms, power tools, and an assortment of vehicles.
"Most everything was bought on eBay," Buckborough said.
All told, there were four snowmobiles, four all-terrain vehicles, and 26 cars, pick-up trucks, and sport-utility vehicles, including a 1923 Ford Model-T, a 1986 Jaguar coupe, and a rare 1937 Chevy delivery truck.
Buckborough also regaled friends and acquaintances with lavish gifts, all-expenses paid vacations, clothes, and jewelry.
She purchased 10 horses for her and her daughter.
The array of thoroughbreds and quarter horses, stabled in Lincoln, are valued at almost $185,000, according to Ferreira.
For Christmas in 2004, Buckborough gave her horse trainer, Sandy, $1,000 cash, a roundtrip plane ticket, and a hotel suite at the Bellagio in Las Vegas; the following Christmas, she treated Sandy to a trip to the Kentucky Derby.
That year she also bought Platt -- a stay-at-home dad -- a $17,000 diamond earring. She booked an August trip to the NASCAR 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee for another couple.
IN COURT YESTERDAY, associate Justice Michael A. Silverstein granted Ferreira $16,072,692 -- or twice the amount of damages Ferreira claimed.
Under state law, Ferreira is entitled to "double damages" because Buckborough and Platt admitted to larceny.
Since June, Buckborough and Platt have been cooperating with Ferreira and his lawyers, transferring all their real estate and personal property to Ferreira in an effort to make restitution.
"This is not a drop in the bucket" for my business, Ferreira said in a phone conversation yesterday. "We are regrouping and getting things back in order."
Neither the couple nor their lawyer, Gary G. Pelletier, was present in court yesterday.
Ferreira, who is storing most of the couple's possessions in a warehouse, "is trying to sell as much as he can at this point in time," Kelly said. "He is out of a lot of money that he might never get back."
AT THE TIME her scam unraveled, Buckborough was planning and financing a $240,000-plus wedding for her brother, Robert Buckborough, of Swansea and his fiancée Debbie Hunter, also of Swansea.
Set for late June, the wedding and reception was to be held on her Vermont estate. A New York City dance troupe had been hired for $50,000, and two bands were set to perform. Buckborough had signed off on a $15,000 fireworks display for the evening. The newlyweds would have honeymooned in Paris.
And while Buckborough spent thousands to celebrate her brother's wedding, what was one of Platt's last major purchases with the stolen money?
"A cuckoo clock," he said. It cost $2,000
