Former Grady Payroll Director Sentenced for Embezzling

Photo Credit: unclepockets/ Flickr

A former payroll director at Grady Memorial Hospital who used his position to enrich his own bank account will be spending the rest of this decade behind bars, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.

Donald Thomas, 55, was sentenced to seven years and three months in federal prison this month following his December conviction on six counts of theft from an organization receiving federal funds, six counts of wire fraud, and two counts of bank fraud. Thomas must also serve three more years on probation and make restitution in the amount of $482,851.76 to the hospital.

Thomas ran the hospital’s payroll operations from 1994 to 2011. Between 2008 and 2011, he used his knowledg and near total control of the payroll system to grant additional severance and vacation pay to terminated Grady employees. He then altered the records to ensure that the new, fraudulent payments went into a business account he controlled. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Thomas received 134 payments using this scheme, totaling some $480,000.

As the scheme wore on, Thomas got sloppy with his efforts to hide the transactions and some of them began showing up as pay for the former employees, which showed up on their W-2 tax documents. The U.S. Attorney’s office said that one of these inflated W-2 documents caused a former employee to contact Grady, which soon uncovered Thomas’ scheme.

“As a result of the defendant’s embezzlement, Grady Hospital lost hundreds of thousands of dollars that otherwise would have gone towards patient care,” said Acting U.S. Attorney John Horn. “Grady has made monumental changes to restore its financial health, and Thomas used his position of trust at the hospital to harm these efforts simply for his own personal gain. Today he goes to prison.”