Bogart bookkeeper pleads guilty, faces prison time

An Athens-area bookkeeper is facing decades in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of fines after prosecutors said she defrauded her clients for years to help pay for luxury items.

Suzanne Brooks, 42, of Bogart, pleaded guilty to wire fraud.

According to court documents, Brooks was a bookkeeper from 2013 to 2018 for two individuals who both owned real estate companies in Georgia. Brooks was entrusted with access to paper checks and online banking login credentials for their businesses at multiple FDIC-insured institutions.

Authorities said Brooks used business bank accounts to make multiple payments towards personal credit card balances for her and her husband with various credit card companies, without authorization from the victims. Brooks used the money to pay for her living expenses, including utilities for her home, insurance payments, restaurants, first-class travel, online shopping, retail purchases, fine jewelry and to purchase inventory for her side business selling clothing with a multi-level marketing company, prosecutors said. When her personal credit cards developed balances, Brooks repeatedly used the victims’ funds to pay off those balances at her discretion and without their authorization.

Brooks concealed her theft by falsifying Profit & Loss statements and other files in the accounting software used by the businesses, resulting in both victims believing their businesses to be less profitable than they actually were. Brooks also altered bank statement records and wrote dozens of unauthorized checks to herself.

In total, Brooks caused at least $659,106 of intended losses to the victims.

“These small business owners believed their family companies to be less lucrative, when in fact their trusted bookkeeper was skimming off some of the profit to pay for her lifestyle,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Peter D. Leary. “Fraud has a negative ripple effect which too often results in the downfall of a small business, leaving people unemployed and destroying years of effort and hard work. Our office, working alongside our law enforcement partners, will hold fraudsters accountable for their crimes and the harm they cause.”

Brooks will be sentenced at a later date.

The case was investigated by FBI.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lyndie Freeman prosecuted the case.

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