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Embezzlement Hurt Colleagues, They Say

WAUKESHA, Wisconsin -- As reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: ``In the five years that Sharon Wertz stole more than $700,000 from her former employer, she and her husband bought new vans, landscaped their yard, and gambled up a storm at Potawatomi Bingo Casino, according to Circuit Court records.

``She paid off her credit card balance, put a brick patio behind her former Brookfield home and slipped her husband cash to buy a classic Chrysler over the Internet, records say.

``Although Wertz stole directly from company coffers, she indirectly picked the pockets of her then-co-workers, and now that she's pleaded guilty, some of them are telling the judge who will sentence her how they have paid for her high living.

```The co-workers suffered just as much as the company because the losses of the company were transferred to the employees in many ways,' Aloysius J. Braun said in a letter to the judge on Wertz's theft from Aladdin Engineering & Manufacturing Inc. in the City of Pewaukee.

``Pay raises were postponed for the past three years; health insurance benefits were reduced; and the company's 401(k) match was discontinued, among other things, workers wrote.

``…Wertz, 38, of Wauwatosa, pleaded guilty Wednesday to felony counts of theft in a business setting and forgery for her embezzlement from Aladdin between January 1997 and May 2002. Her sentencing date will be set next month…"

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