10-15-04 -- White, Milton -- Sentencing -- News Release

Temporary Employee Sentenced to 18 Months for embezzling $500,000 From N.Y. Company

NEWARK - A temporary employee was sentenced today to 18 months in federal prison for embezzling more than $446,000 from his former employer, Tilcon New York, Inc., U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie announced.

U.S. District Judge Harold A. Ackerman also ordered Milton White, a 34-year-old Jamaican national, to pay $446,000 in restitution to a Tilcon insurer.

White pleaded guilty on April 21 to one count of mail fraud. Among other things, White admitted that in 1997, using an alias "Jessie McRae" and listing his residence in Englewood, he was hired in Tilcon's accounting department where he performed various bookkeeping services, said Robert Kirsch, the Assistant U.S. Attorney who handled the case. Tilcon, of West Nyack, N.Y., a construction materials company which employs approximately 500 people, hired "McRae" as a "temporary employee."

According to the Information to which he pleaded guilty, White embezzled six blank Tilcon corporate checks which he and another individual then issued in the name of deceased Teaneck resident Willie Shedrick by forging the required signatures of Tilcon executives. The other individual was related to and lived with Shedrick, and was administrator of the Shedrick estate. The deceased Mr. Shedrick was a porter at Cornell Medical Center in New York, before he died in April 1997, Kirsch said. White admitted that Tilcon did not owe any financial obligation to Mr. Shedrick.

According to the Information, the forged Tilcon checks, which were drawn from the company's First Union bank account, were deposited into the estate's bank account at a Teaneck branch of Fleet Bank by the purported administrator of Shedrick's estate.

The forged checks, stolen in the three months White worked for Tilcon in mid-1997, totaled $446,787. In exchange for him stealing the checks, the estate's administrator then kicked back approximately $200,000 to White in checks and cash, Kirsch said.

White was arrested in January 2004 in Florida on a federal complaint and arrest warrant for this offense. White was arrested upon his release from detention on a state drug offense.

Christie credited Special Agents of the Secret Service, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Jan H. Gilhooly in Morristown, for bringing the case against White.

The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kirsch, of the Securities and Health Care Fraud Unit, in Newark.

-end-

Defense Counsel:

Stacy M. Biancamano, Esq., Federal Public Defender's Office, Newark