Ex-Clerk Pleads Guilty in Theft From Producer
A Beverly Hills woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to embezzling more than $690,000 from B-movie producer Roger Corman, none of which has been recovered.
Clara Sukizi Sichinga, 32, formerly a clerk in the accounts payable department of Corman’s Concorde-New Horizons film and video company, was charged with making up bogus vendor invoices that were paid by company checks.
The checks were deposited into a Bank of America account in Beverly Hills, bearing the name of a suspected accomplice who remains at large.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Jack Weiss said $535,000 of the money was wired from the B of A account to a bank in Belgium and then withdrawn, apparently by Sichinga’s partner. Another $155,000 was withdrawn from the B of A branch.
Sichinga has been in custody since May, when she was arrested at the offices of Warner Bros. Records, where she worked in the accounting department.
She is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 14 in federal court in Los Angeles on five bank fraud and two wire fraud counts. Under federal sentencing guidelines, she faces 18 to 24 months in prison.
Weiss declined to elaborate on the unrecovered money or Sichinga’s alleged accomplice except to say that the FBI is continuing its investigation.
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