On September 27, 2021, Jennifer Rebecca Sohn of Madison Lake was charged with multiple felonies after stealing from her employer, Boss Supply of Janesville. The charges included four counts of theft by swindle and two counts of check forgery, all felonies.
Boss Supply had accused Sohn of stealing $39,000 from the company from August 2019 to March 2020. Sohn was hired in July 2019 as a part-time bookkeeper. Her role was to handle payroll and pay company bills. She had access to the company’s bank account, checkbook, and debit card.
According to the criminal complaint, the following was reported by Boss Supply and another bookkeeper at the time:
-Sohn wrote twelve checks to herself with a forged signature of one of the owners.
-She had four payroll checks that she overpaid herself.
-She had 900 hours of paid time that was never worked.
Court documents showed that police compared Sohn’s forged signatures and the owners’ real signatures and confirmed they were not a match. Based on the investigation, court records also show:
-Thirteen unauthorized checks Sohn allegedly forged and deposited totaling $16,260.
-Payroll claimed but not worked, totaling $15,158.
-Four payroll checks totaling $1,130 above the amount earned.
-Multiple personal purchases without Boss Supply’s authorization totaling $6,600.
Boss Supply told the police that on May 17, 2021, Sohn showed up at the home of one of the owners to give him a $15,000 check and claimed she’d pay more if she owed more. He remembered her
saying she didn’t know how much she owed and didn’t realize that “things got so out of hand.”
After an initial interview with the police on April 27, 2021, she reportedly told them on June 8, that she was speaking with attorneys and would not give a second interview. The following day, Boss Supply contacted the police, informing them of additional receipts for repairs and purchases that weren’t
entered into the books, along with false credits to customers that didn’t exist.
She had allegedly also sent texts to one of the owners that read, “I am praying, pleading, and desperate to make this up to you as best I possibly can” and “I can give you guys another 43k using all of my credit cards today.”
Although Boss Supply had accused her of stealing $39,000, according to the Mankato Free Press in its September 29, 2021 issue, that she had stolen a confirmed total of $39,149 from the company; police suspected at the time that Sohn stole additional amounts from Boss Supply.
Sohn was officially sentenced to jail time on March 16 of this year. Although initially charged with six felonies, she entered a plea deal and was instead charged with two counts. She had to pay restitution to Boss Supply, including hiring an outside entity to audit the
company’s books.
Though she was charged and convicted in Waseca County, Sohn was to spend her sentence at the Le Sueur County jail, where Waseca County usually sends its female prisoners. However, she was not allowed to serve time there due to past problems with a jailer at that jail. Instead, she is spending her sentence at the Watonwan County jail. She was officially booked there on March 16, with a projected release date of April 10, 2024.
This wasn’t the first time Sohn had done this to a business. Several years ago, she worked at another local business, and had allegedly swindled them of money, too. With her release date approaching, Boss Supply wants to make sure everyone in the local area knows what she’s done. “We don’t want her to do this to anyone again,” they shared. We want businesses, especially small ones, to know what she’s done and is capable of.”
Based on her track record and her lack of remorse from what she did to Boss Supply, this is what they had to say, “We had trusted her and thought that being a small family business, she took advantage of us in every way and showed absolutely no remorse for what she had done.”
