A Worcester County Grand Jury has filed four charges against a former Brimfield Animal Control Officer after officials said she stole nearly $750,000 from a Southbridge welding company and used it to buy dirt bikes, a pickup truck and pay taxes. on her horse farm, according to court documents.
Krystine O’Connor, 49, who also goes by the surname Corkery, faces a voicing count, a forging corporate book count, a theft count of more than $1,200 and a forgery count. She was arrested on February 14.
O’Connor was the office manager at Mid-State Welding when 64 checks totaling $743,526.71 were fraudulently cashed, according to court documents. She has worked for Mid-State Welding in Southbridge since 2017 and “some of her duties allowed her to fill the business checks, but the checks still needed his signature,” Daniel Seaver, owner of the company, told the police. However, according to court records, the signatures on the checks did not match Seaver’s.
The checks were dated between March 10, 2018 and December 11, 2021, officials said. O’Connor, who lives in Fiskdale, was also the Brimfield Animal Control Officer, but resigned on January 12 due to “personal reasons,” Brimfield Chief of Police Charles Kuss said.
“During her tenure here, I found her to be a good employee,” Kuss wrote in an email earlier. “She was instrumental in arranging the ACO position and job duties and keeping the unit running better than in the recent past.”
Court documents state that the checks were sent to Capital One, the City of Brimfield, Farm Credit East (FCE) and Lending Club. Seaver told police he did not have a Capitol Once account, owned no property in Brimfield, and did not have an FCE mortgage account.
Seaver also told police he believed “the checks written to the City of Brimfield were used to pay her farm’s property taxes. Detective Evan Genkos of the Southbridge Police Department found that O’Connor had also paid her mortgages for her farm with Mid-State Welding’s checks, he said in a report.
Genkos also stated that he believed that Capitol One’s account belonged to O’Connor.
Seaver told the detective that O’Connor recently “purchased a brand new $85,000 2022 Ram 2500 pickup truck,” court documents state. He went on to state that he knew that O’Connor had bought a $70,000 RV two years earlier.
“Daniel stated that it appeared that O’Connor would draw random checks from the monthly checks to be signed by him and pay her Capital One credit card bills in return,” the court records read.
Police then confirmed that O’Connor owns a 2022 Ram truck, bought a motorhome in 2018 and paid property taxes in Brimfield on the dates coinciding with the fraudulent checks.
The detective also stated that O’Connor used her Capital One credit card more than 4,000 times between January 2018 and January 2022 “for a total cost of $834,330.14.” Of those, 65 were for transactions to Fairview Farms, owned by O’Connor, for a total of $212,200. Police also said two dirt bikes, including one for $9,794.45, were purchased by O’Connor using the credit card paid off via checks from Mid-State Welding.
“I believe that O’Connor paid herself (Fairview Farms) with her Capital One credit card and in return paid her credit card bills with stolen and fraudulent checks from Mid-State Welding,” Genkos wrote.
Capital One closed her account on Jan. 12, the same day she resigned as the animal protection officer, court documents say.
“I believe that if O’Connor had not been caught, she would have continued to steal from Mid-State Welding,” Genkos concluded.
No arraignment date has yet been set in the Worcester High Court.
Related content: