SATICOY : Retired Accountant Indicted in Fraud

The Ventura County grand jury has indicted the retired accountant of a Saticoy citrus company on charges that he embezzled more than $112,000 from the company over a five-year period.

The indictment was issued Thursday against David Eugene Bransdor, 53, who retired as accountant for the Buenaventura Lemon Co. last June and moved to New Albany, Ind. Police there and the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department arrested Bransdor without incident at his home, Sheriff’s Sgt. Frank O’Hanlon said.

After Bransdor left the citrus company, employees noticed discrepancies in the company’s books and discovered a check made out to Bransdor that he had signed, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Cloninger said. After checking the company’s books further and obtaining copies of canceled checks from the bank, the employees found 23 other checks Cloninger had made out to himself, all for less than $5,000 each so they would not attract attention, Cloninger said.

“When you talk to people from the business, they always seem to feel his lifestyle was a little more extravagant than what was derived from the business, but not excessively so,” Cloninger said.

Bransdor’s new residence in Indiana was “well-known to the people in the company,” Cloninger said. “He left a forwarding address. It looked like he didn’t expect to get caught.”

The grand jury indicted Bransdor on one count of grand theft and 15 counts of forgery, plus four counts of state tax fraud for allegedly failing to report embezzled money as income to the California Franchise Tax Board.

Bransdor has refused to voluntarily return to Ventura County to stand trial, so he is scheduled to fight extradition at a July 14 court hearing in New Albany, Bennett said.