Cynthia Marie Marabella, a controller at a Las Vegas construction company, pleaded guilty on April 24, 2026 to embezzling over $26 million from her employer across seven years, working with her boyfriend William Keolanui Costa.
With access to accounts payable, accounts receivable, and the financial statements, Marabella ran multiple overlapping schemes: duplicating bonus checks, opening unauthorized credit cards in third parties' names, submitting fictitious invoices from fabricated merchant accounts, and covering her tracks with forged bank statements and falsified accounting records. Luxury merchandise bought with stolen funds was resold through an online consignment company for over $245,000. She faces up to 30 years.
Billing schemes, check tampering, and financial statement fraud, layered together and hidden by the person who kept the books.
You hired someone you trusted. That's not a mistake. It's how every business works.
A Las Vegas construction company trusted its controller completely. She had full access to the bank accounts, the accounting software, the check stock. She was the person who would have caught a problem like this. And that's exactly why the problem lasted seven years and cost the company $26 million.
Cynthia Marie Marabella, along with her boyfriend William Costa, duplicated bonus checks and deposited them into accounts they controlled. They opened credit cards in other people's names and paid them with stolen funds. They created fake vendor invoices. They forged bank statements. And when anyone might have looked, the books said everything was fine, because she was the one maintaining the books.
This is the pattern. Trusted employee, close access to financials, independent operation, and no one looking over their shoulder. It doesn't require malice from the start. Sometimes it starts small and grows because it keeps working.
If you have a gut feeling that something is off, that feeling deserves attention. You don't need a full forensic audit to get answers. A Business Health Check can scan your transaction data, flag unauthorized transfers, identify shell vendors, and surface payroll irregularities in a fraction of the time and cost of a traditional investigation. If you're also preparing to sell, that same analysis gives a buyer confidence and you leverage.
I've spent 15+ years investigating financial crime in law enforcement, fintech, and the credit bureaus. I write these briefs so the patterns are harder to miss. If this one hits close to home, I'm easy to reach.