Brick Man Stole $833K As CFO Of Financial Company Gets Probation

FREEHOLD, NJ — A certified public accountant from Brick Township has been sentenced to probation on his guilty plea to stealing more than $800,000 from his former employer, the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office announced Wednesday.

Scott Lifshitz, 60, was sentenced to two years' probation by Superior Court Judge Jill Grace O’Malley on May 12, Prosecutor Raymond S. Santiago said.

Lifshitz pleaded guilty to second-degree theft of movable property before Judge Richard W. English on Feb. 10, and on that date paid restitution of $833,000 to a representative of his former employer, the prosecutor's office said. O'Malley acknowledged the restitution when she sentenced him.

Lifshitz had been the chief financial officer of a Matawan-based financial services technology company and oversaw its daily financial operations and had access to all of the company’s bank accounts, investigators learned.

As the chief financial officer he was able to write company checks payable to himself and to initiate wire transfers of company funds into his personal accounts — all of those transactions were unauthorized, the prosecutor's office said.

On the day Lifshitz was fired from the company, in September 2022, he tried to deposit two additional company checks into his personal bank accounts, the prosecutor's office said. Lifshitz already had been removed as an authorized signatory on the company accounts, and the deposit attempt failed.

The founders of the company reported the theft to the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office shortly after they fired Lifshitz, the prosecutor's office said, and detectives confirmed his activity through interviews with the founders and by reviewing subpoenaed bank records and other documents establishing the theft, which happened over a period of roughly two years from September 2020 through September 2022, authorities said.

The prosecutor's office did not name the company, and it did not say how the founders realized Lifshitz was stealing from the company.

The case was handled by Monmouth County Assistant Prosecutor Diane Aifer.