Woman sentenced following guilty plea in $1M employer theft case

A woman accused of stealing more than $1 million from her former employer in Greenfield has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana announced Friday that Jennifer Horton, 49, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and was sentenced to 30 months of incarceration followed by a year of supervised release.

Horton was also ordered to pay a judgment of $1 million and forfeit four vehicles: 2021 and 2022 Ford Mustangs, a 2020 Ford Ecosport and a 2022 Ford F350.

Horton, who now lives in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, was indicted in March on five federal wire fraud charges, though three of those charges were dropped as part of her plea agreement.

According to court records, Horton pleaded guilty and received her sentence on Dec. 19. The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced the sentencing on Friday.

Prosecutors say that, between 2016 and 2022, Horton used multiple tactics to steal a total of $1.12 million from the family-owned Greenfield contracting company for which she worked as an office manager. She is alleged to have inflated her salary on 466 occasions without approval, redirected customers’ credit card payments into her personal bank account more than 185 times, and used a company credit card to pay her personal bills and make personal purchases, including a house, cars and clothing.

“This criminal abused her friendships and position of trust to swindle a family-owned company out of over a million dollars,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana Zachary A. Myers said in a written statement.

The indictment does not identify Horton’s former employer, instead referring to it as Company 1, a Greenfield-based business “specializing in residential and light commercial repair and restoration” and owned by an individual identified only as D.M.

But in a separate civil suit filed in May 2023 in Hancock Superior Court, H.D. Contracting Inc. sued Horton and her husband, Jonathan Horton. That suit’s allegations mirror those laid out in the criminal indictment.