Bradenton woman charged with embezzling money from veterinarian clinic for 17 years
A Bradenton woman is facing fraud charges after it was discovered that she embezzled Palma Sola Animal Clinic out of more than $120,000 over the past 17 years.
Catrina Lee Jones, 50, was arrested on Thursday and charged with scheming to defraud more than $50,000, a first-degree felony. She was released from the Manatee County jail on Friday on a $50,000 bond and ordered on Supervised Release, according to jail records.
As part of her release, a judge ordered that Jones — who no longer works at the veterinarian office — not be employed by any business to handle financial transactions, court records show.
Palma Sola Animal Clinic declined to comment about the case.
The clinic first discovered last month that Jones was padded her timecard with extra hours she didn’t work, according to a criminal complaint. An audit of her timecards found that Jones was paid $2,257.53 for time she did not work.
Jones, an employee since 1998, was told about the audit and it’s findings. She responded in an email from her personal account, admitting that she had also been deleting cash transactions from the clinic’s accounting system and keeping the cash for herself.
When the clinic audited every transaction Jones had handled, they discovered that she had been embezzling from the company since 2005. In total, Palma Sola Animal Clinic found that Jones had taken $123,564.49.
Jones is charged with stealing $79,896.16 since 2018 — because of the statutory limits on a scheme to defraud charge.
Before charging her, detectives set up a controlled call between the clinic’s owner Dr. Bill Bystrom and Jones during which she made several admissions including how she handled the transactions and kept from being discovered for so many years.
