Former manager embezzles over $225,000 from Rockwell Automation
Posted: Jul 22, 2015 2:36 PM CDT | Updated: Jul 22, 2015 2:41 PM CDT
A former Rockwell Automation employee has been charged with three counts of fraud for taking at least $225,451.43 from Rockwell Automation for his own personal use.
Eduardo Africano worked as a Manager for the Contracts and Negotiations in Latin American operations. He traveled for business. Rockwell Automation provided him with three corporate credit cards exclusively for business travel expenses.
Africano has criminal convictions under the name Eduardo Orozco in Harris County, Texas. The convictions were for possession of cocaine in 1987 and forgery in 1990.
He had previously filed bankruptcy in Florida where he resides.
He used the corporate credit cards to pay for trips for his family that were not business related. In some cases he changed the destination on expense reports if the company didn't have business where he went.
He told the company he flew to Chile, Panama and Mexico. But airline records showed he allegedly never traveled to those countries on dates in the reports.
In addition, he allegedly paid for his wife and other family members to go to Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, Monterey and Cancun. He reported theses expenses as corporate related travel to South America.
RockWell, also, paid for three trips in 2012 for Africano and a woman who was not his wife. These trips were to Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Weston, Florida; and to Cancun.
According to the complaint, Africano created a company called Omegaworld Inc. He opened a merchant account with credit card processing company. All charges sent to OmegaWorld were sent to his personal checking account. He had Rockwell Automation wire money to OmegaWorld on numerous occasions.