Judge Orders Psychic to Surrender $3 Million Embezzled by Executive
A federal judge on Thursday ordered a psychic to surrender $3,445,000 she says she received as a gift from the free-spending ex-wife of a convicted corporate embezzler.
Katie Merino declined to comment after U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson’s verdict in a brief nonjury trial, but Merino’s lawyer said he doubts any of the money is left.
The funds represent a fraction of about $95 million that was embezzled by Yasuyoshi Kato while he was employed as chief financial officer of Day-Lee Foods of Santa Fe Springs.
Kato, 41, was sentenced to five years and three months in prison last year after his conviction in what prosecutors said appeared to be the largest single corporate embezzlement in U.S. history.
At the time of his sentencing, Kato’s lawyer contended that Kato was at the mercy of a wife who had an insatiable appetite for material delights.
The stolen money was spent on luxurious homes, cars, jewelry, a citrus ranch, an automobile agency, a Torrance bar called Club Cha Cha and a menagerie of exotic pets that included potbellied pigs, macaws, emus, sharks and miniature horses. Some of the money also wound up in the hands of Merino, according to attorneys for Day-Lee Foods, a subsidiary of Nippon Meat Packers of Osaka, one of Japan’s largest meatpackers.
In its lawsuit, Day-Lee said Doris Ann Kato wrote checks totaling $3,445,000 to Merino between 1992 and 1996, using funds that were traceable to the embezzlement. Neither Merino nor Doris Ann Kato were charged with any criminal wrongdoing.
Merino’s lawyer, Robert Alden Welbourn, told Wilson on Thursday that Kato’s wife gave his client the money as an expression of “love and affection.”
He said Merino had helped Doris Ann Kato weather several emotional crises, including the breakup of her marriage, a death in the family and a cancer scare.
Outside of court, he said the gifts had nothing to do with Merino’s work as a psychic in Torrance.
Kenneth N. Russak, Day-Lee’s lawyer, indicated that he would soon file a discovery motion to find out what Merino did with the money.
