JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Jacksonville accountant has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to embezzling millions.
Richard Aboud, 81, pleaded guilty to one count of organized fraud after investigators said he siphoned millions of dollars from a trust and used some of it on exotic dancers.
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In addition to that 10-year sentence, he has also been ordered to pay $2.7 million in restitution.
Investigators said Aboud, a CPA, withdrew between three and four million dollars from a trust over a 10-year period and siphoned some of it into shell companies in his name. He wrote off the missing funds as losses on investments in the trust accounting documents.
The incident report said, most notably, Aboud transferred about $2.5 million from the trust to a company registered to him called Bakken Systems and used that money to invest in a water “cleaning” machine. The report said he admitted he “knew it was wrong” and that he was “personally going to keep the profit” from the endeavor.
But investigators also said he used money from the trust to pay the living expenses of other people, including two exotic dancers “whom [he] paid money for company.”
The incident report said he spent more than $82,000 on one dancer over the course of about 11 months. He claimed the relationship was over, but she was blackmailing him not to tell his wife.
Aboud was arrested in January and released on bond. Duval County jail records show he was taken back into custody last Tuesday when he pleaded guilty to felony organized fraud and was sentenced.
The maximum sentence he could have received was 30 years.
Court records show he has not paid any of the $2.7 million he’s been ordered to pay in restitution.
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