Woman sentenced for theft of over $400,000 from employer

MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- A long-time employee is sentenced on federal mail fraud charges, charged with stealing $400,000 from the company she worked for!

As the controller for Frake's Engineering for 20 years, Brenda Helpling was in charge of finances and bills for the company.

In fact, Helpling was the only person overseeing company finances, which made it easy for her to steal. The total losses for the company totaled $400,000.

"She created fictitious accounts in order to pay her own bills and gambling expenses," U.S. Postal Inspector Kenneth Miller said.

The company realized there was a problem when Helpling went on vacation and another employee noticed discrepancies.

"Her backup was looking at some of the payments and she looked at the bills and realized a lot of the bills weren`t companies they did business with," Miller said.

The company went to police and postal inspectors, who say Helpling's gambling problem helped them track her down.

"We followed the money trail and it led to Brenda Helpling and her accounts and we also went to the casinos and looked at her credit card payments," Miller said.

Some advice for business owners: get an annual audit done by an outside accounting firm.

"A company should always have checks and balances in place and not one person. Always check to see where money is going," Miller said.

Helpling was sentenced to more than two years in federal prison on mail fraud charges and was ordered to pay more than $400,000 in restitution.