Racine Man Accused of Embezzling $13K from Business for Infant Son

MOUNT PLEASANT, WI — A Racine man is accused of stealing more than $13,000 from the cell phone store he worked at so he could support his infant son.

According to police, Yonis "Johnny" Turcios of Racine has been charged with felony embezzlement in the scheme, which involved manipulating the books at the St. Francis Metro PCS during early 2017.

According to his criminal complaint, Turcios stole more than $13,200 from the PCS Metro store located at 3923 S. 76th Street between Jan. 1 and May 2, 2017.

According to these reports, authorities interviewed Turcios on May 3, where he admitted to the theft. He claimed that S. Whitnall Store employee Joshua Landmark taught him how to use the Quatum accounting system to take cash payments without it showing up on the store’s books.

According to the criminal complaint, Landmark told police he learned how to take money from Turcios in January 2017. He said that Turcios taught him that if he went back to using the old “5.0” payment system, management would be unable to monitor these transactions in their monthly X-Report.

According to the complaint, at first Landmark did not believe it but he tried it and no one said anything. After this Landmark periodically use the old payment system to steal cash payments from customers. Eventually he got greedy, Landmark said, and used this method more and more.

In the criminal complaint, Landmark wrote a written statement and said he stole the money because he was in desperate need of it. He saved none of the stolen money and spent it on paying family’s traffic tickets, bills, and eating out.

Turcios stated he would take about $200 a day, and used it to buy diapers, baby formula, and food for his infant son and girlfriend. Told that $13,203 was missing, Turcios said he did not take that much and estimated the amount to be closer to $1,500.

Turcio said he was "not greedy", and wrote a three-page apology letter to the company. Authorities noted that $200 a day times only 20 working days a month times three or four months exceeds $10,000.

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