Area accountant sentenced to 3-plus years for embezzling nearly $1M

An Indianapolis-area accountant has been sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for embezzling nearly $1 million from his former employer, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

Nathaniel D. Wills, 34, was also ordered to spend three years on supervised release after his time in prison and pay $877,507 in restitution. The sentence was imposed by U.S. District Judge James P. Hanlon.

Wills, who has lived in Carmel and Anderson in recent years, pleaded guilty to one count of fraud in May.

Wills served as director of administration at Indiana Flooring and Linoleum Co. Inc. in Anderson for nearly six years. The company does business as Indiana Carpet One Floor and Home.

According to the plea agreement filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Indiana, between August 2020 and February 2022, Wills took $952,237 of company money for his own personal use, including for online gambling.

Investigators say Wills was entrusted with writing and signing checks, making electronic payments, performing reconciliations between the company’s accounting and banking records, and maintaining the company’s accounting ledgers. He transferred the stolen funds from the company’s payroll and operating accounts to his personal bank accounts.

It an attempt to conceal his scheme, Wills falsified inventory logs, listing jobs as unpaid, and voiding checks. He also obtained a principal advance of $80,000 from his employer’s line of credit in order to meet the company’s payroll and vendor payment obligations.

The Department of Justice did not identify the Wills’ former company by name, referring to it as “Company A,” an Indiana-based flooring and installation business.

But Indiana Flooring and Linoleum filed its own civil suit against Wills in March 2022, and that case outlined the allegations in more detail than the federal plea agreement.

In the civil case, which was pending in Madison Circuit Court, Indiana Flooring alleged that Wills treated the company “as his personal piggy bank,” taking money from the company’s line of credit, operating accounts and Payroll Protection Program federal loan proceeds.

The plaintiff also alleged that Wills refrained from paying the company’s suppliers, insurance providers, the Indiana Department of Revenue and the company’s 401(k) retirement account funder so that there would be more money in the company’s bank accounts for Wills to steal.

Wills altered the company’s financial records to cover up his actions, the civil suit alleges.

Indiana Flooring’s owners did not suspect Wills of theft, the civil suit says. But after reviewing their company’s financial records and reports, they had questions about the company’s financial situation and asked Wills to discuss it with them, the lawsuit alleges.

Wills agreed to a meeting, but he came to work the weekend before the meeting and “cleaned out his office, destroyed all paperwork, and erased his computer to cover his tracks,” the lawsuit alleges. Wills then resigned an hour before the meeting was to have taken place, the suit alleges.

After Wills’ resignation, the company took a closer look at its financial records and discovered the theft, the suit alleges.

The theft put Indiana Flooring into “financial jeopardy on multiple fronts,” the suit says, forcing one of the owners to use personal cash and seek out loans to cover its payroll and other expenses.

“This was not just a financial crime but an act of betrayal of the defendant’s employer that could have had a devastating and crippling effect on the business and its employees,” said FBI Indianapolis Special Agent in Charge Herbert Stapleton in written comments. “Anyone who believes they can steal without consequence will find out the FBI aggressively pursues those who exploit their positions of trust for personal gain to ensure they are held accountable.”