Woman allegedly used ‘ghost employees’ to take $370K from a Perry food plant
A woman who worked for a facility maintenance and commercial cleaning service company at a chicken cooking plant in Perry was accused of taking over $370,000 in wages using “ghost employees,” according to federal court records from Wednesday.
Ashley Moore, who was in charge of staffing services at the Perdue cook plant in Perry under GDI Integrated Facility Services, was accused by federal prosecutors of committing bank fraud from Dec. 1, 2022, to March 31, 2023, by making it seem like eight “former GDI employees had been rehired to work at the Perdue cook plant,” court documents say.
She would submit hours that the “ghost employees” worked and claimed over $370,000 in wages, according to charging documents.
“In reality, these people had not been rehired and had not worked for GDI and Perdue,” court records say.
How she pulled it off
Moore provided employees of the Perdue cooking plant with bank cards through Pathward NA called Rapid Cards. Employees would receive their payroll through the card once they activated it. She would process payroll and submit the hours from GDI employees to Perdue, and Perdue would pay GDI for those employees’ wages plus a service fee to GDI, court records say.
Perdue and GDI kept a log of employees’ hours, court records say.
She also had access to employee records that included their name, date of birth, social security number and address for both active and inactive employees, court records say.
“Moore would then take Rapid Cards for these ‘ghost employees’ and activate them,” prosecutors said in court records. “Once payroll was deposited on the Rapid Cards, she would either take the cards to ATMs to withdraw the cash or use the cards to make point of sale transactions.”
As a result, she allegedly billed Perdue $266,248 in wages. With the service fees, she obtained a total of $375,757.
Moore didn’t have a date set for an initial court appearance as of Wednesday.
