LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A former community college dean who was convicted in a local elder abuse case in 2005 and in September was sentenced to jail in Sacramento for identity theft cases involving his grown children is now facing a new criminal case for embezzling from a Lake County company.
Deputy District Attorney Rachel Abelson said a case was filed on Feb. 7 and an arrest warrant issued by the Lake County Superior Court the following day for George Tanner McQueen II, 61, who formerly lived in Lake County and now lives in the Sacramento area.
Documents included in the filing show that the sheriff’s office forwarded to the District Attorney’s Office a complaint of embezzlement against McQueen in September after investigating a case involving a local couple and their construction company.
In a declaration, the couple said they had hired McQueen’s company, McQueen and Associates, to do their bookkeeping, payroll and tax returns, with payments made to McQueen for his service by check, not wire or other kinds of automated bank transfers.
Altogether, McQueen transferred more than $103,000 from their accounts – $60,000 from personal accounts and $43,000 from a business account, according to case documents.
One of the victims said he had known McQueen for 45 years and McQueen had been their accountant for 25 years.
In an August interview with detectives, the couple said they found McQueen had been wiring money from their business and personal accounts into his own account. When they confronted McQueen, he claimed it was a mistake. However, bank statements showed that the funds were transferred over the course of several days and different transactions that occurred in August.
When a sheriff’s detective called McQueen to ask how the couple’s money got into his accounts, he also claimed it was a “glitch.”
Although McQueen had promised the couple that he would return the money, it wasn’t returned to their accounts, according to the investigation’s findings.
The couple discovered the missing funds just weeks before McQueen was sentenced in Placer and Sacramento counties for separate cases of felony identity theft involving his adult children.
On Sept. 6 in Sacramento County he was sentenced to one year in jail and five years of formal probation for one count of felony identity theft in a case involving the use of his son Nathan McQueen’s personal information.
Then, on Sept. 7 in Placer County he pleaded no contest and was sentenced for one felony count of identity theft for using the personal information of his daughter, Sarah Cunningham.
In the Placer County case George McQueen received four years of formal probation, was ordered to pay $10,891.06 in restitution to the victims and received 120 days in county jail to run concurrently with the one-year sentence he received in Sacramento County, officials said.
Lake County News published a full account of the cases involving his children in September: http://bit.ly/2CxrYKN .
In 2005 McQueen – who at one time had served locally as a Yuba College dean and had worked for the Lake County Office of Education – was arrested in Lake County for forgery, elder abuse and grand theft after it was discovered that he had stolen funds from the trust of a friend who had named him executor that were intended for the man’s elderly mother. The funds were used by McQueen for personal uses, including expensive family vacations.
He later would reach a plea agreement with the District Attorney’s Office in which he was convicted of elder abuse. He was sentenced to a year in jail and required to to pay $185,000 in restitution.
Abelson, who prosecuted McQueen’s original case in Lake County, had confirmed to Lake County News in September that, because of McQueen’s ongoing business ties to Lake County and the potential for local identity theft and fraud victims, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and Lake County District Attorney’s Office had begun an investigation.
So far, she said just the two victims included in the complaint filed this month have been identified in Lake County.
“I suspect that there’s more in the Sacramento area,” she said.
Since publishing a story about McQueen’s sentencing in September, Lake County News has received inquiries from other potential victims and former clients from outside of Lake County who reported issues including getting fines from the Internal Revenue Service after McQueen filed their taxes.
McQueen has been serving his most recent jail sentence in Sacramento County’s Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center since September. Jail records show that he is due to be released on March 3.
Lt. Corey Paulich of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office said that before the Sacramento County jail releases McQueen next month, they’ll check his records.
At that time, the newly filed Lake County warrant should pop up and instead of being released McQueen will be transported to Lake County to face this latest case, Paulich said.
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Authorities issue arrest warrant for former local school official accused of embezzlement
- Elizabeth Larson
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