Accused embezzler’s trail ends in Tipp City

A West Chester Twp. woman who has used aliases, cover stories and a name change to steal from her employers over the years remained in jail Friday night, accused of taking $220,000 from her most recent employer.

Cathleen Schmid, 47, was being detained on a $50,000 bond in the Hamilton County Jail on charges of theft involving a company in Fairfax, Ohio. According to Hamilton County authorities, she went into hiding after she was indicted in that county in May stemming from the theft of $220,000.

This week, she was taken away in handcuffs from Miami Valley Materials Testing, in Tipp City, and owner Craig Riviello told the Cincinnati Enquirer he was mystified at the sight.

He didn’t know Schmid, whom he hired in June, is a convicted felon for taking at least $61,000 from two other employers.

Riviello said he called her references and searched her background using the Internet. Problem was, she gave him a different name.

She added a “t” to her last name and that made finding out about her true background next to impossible. She told the people that do the hiring at his company that she lived in West Carrollton. Her paychecks, however, continued to list a West Chester address.

Schmid had what Riviello called limited bookkeeping duties at his company and so far, no money from his company has come up missing.

According to court and jail records, the daughter of a deceased Cook County, Ill., judge stole $51,000 from an employer in 2005, $10,000 from a Mason employer after that and then was hired in 2007 by Flavored Syrups, a 10-employee Fairfax company that makes and bottles coffees and syrups.

Th Fairfax company was taken over by Dominion Liquid Technologies, which assumed all of the employees it kept had been properly vetted. Schmid disappeared after she was accused in May of stealing $220,000 from that company.

“This has been going on since 2005, seven years,” Riviello said. “That really aggravates me because … that tells me the systems are broke or don’t work.”