FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
May 19, 2015
Contact: Heather F. Williamson
Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office
20 East Market Street
Leesburg, VA 20176-2809
(703) 777-0242
JUDGE IMPOSES TWO YEARS FOR EMBEZZLEMENT
DEFENDANT REPAID OVER $938,000 IN RESTITUTION
LEESBURG, Virginia – May 5, 2015. Boonlomp Soonthornchai, 63, appeared before Judge Benjamin N. A. Kendrick in Loudoun County Circuit Court for sentencing on three counts of felony embezzlement. Kendrick sentenced Soonthornchai to an active sentence of two years in the Virginia Department of Corrections for each charge. The three sentences are to be served concurrently.
For more than thirty years Soonthornchai was a partner in the accounting firm of Yount, Hyde and Barbour, P.C. As an accountant in their Middleburg, Virginia office, Soonthornchai performed trustee, executor and accounting services for a number of trusts and estates that were clients of the firm.
Beginning in 2004, Soonthornchai began depositing money from various trusts and estates into his personal accounts. Soonthornchai mislabeled the source of these deposits in his personal ledger. When confronted by firm board members and attorneys, Soonthornchai admitted to several of the thefts.
Soonthornchai entered Alford pleas of guilty to three counts of embezzlement on February 9, 2015.
Kendrick imposed an additional five years suspended time on each charge, conditioned upon Soonthornchai’s good behavior and his successful completion of five years supervised probation upon his release from prison. Prior to sentencing, Soonthornchai had repaid restitution in excess of $938,000 to the victims in this case.
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