A Bergen County woman was sentenced today to 21 months in prison for her participation in a multi-year embezzlement scheme and to subscribing to a false personal income tax return, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger announced.
According to U.S. Attorney Sellinger, Ruby Baroni, 55, of Lyndhurst, previously pleaded guilty to an information charging her with wire fraud and subscribing to a false tax return.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
Between October 2010 and August 2016, Baroni held an accounting position at a New Jersey guided-tour company.
In that capacity, Baroni had the authority to cut checks against the company’s bank accounts. During that period, Baroni and Estela Laluf, a manager at the company, devised a scheme to embezzle funds from the company.
Laluf would direct Baroni to cut company checks to actual company employees and contractors, which did not reflect any actual work or services done by those individuals.
Baroni would then cash these checks, and Laluf and Baroni would then convert the resulting funds to their personal use.
In this way, Laluf and Baroni embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company. Baroni then fraudulently omitted the proceeds from the embezzlement scheme from her tax year 2016 tax return.
Laluf pleaded guilty before Judge Neals to a separate information related to the scheme on September 20, 2021, and was sentenced on April 25, 2022, to 27 months in prison.