Crime & Safety
VP of Mayfair Title Accused of Embezzling Over $80K
Police say a Greenfield woman stole more than $80,000 from a real estate company over a two-year period, during which she says she fell on hard times.
The vice president of a Wauwatosa real estate company is accused of embezzling more than $80,000 from her employer during a two-year span.
Jolie M. Semancik, 43, of Greenfield, was charged Tuesday in Milwaukee County Circuit Court with one count of theft of more than $10,000 by embezzlement. If convicted, she faces up to five years in prison and $25,000 in fines.
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According to the criminal complaint:
In August, one of the co-owners of Mayfair Title, 1011 N. Mayfair Road, was going through financial data when he noticed some issues with cash balances. Semancik was vice president and operations manager of the company, so he asked her to look into it.
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After a week of looking, the complaint says, Semancik was unable to provide an explanation for the numbers, so the owner looked into it himself. He soon discovered Semancik had embezzled $80,674 between January 2010 and July 16.
He discovered Semancik had written a total of 19 checks to herself, her sister, her mortgage company and a construction company that did work on her home, all from a company account, then changed numbers to hide the theft.
The co-owner confronted Semancik, the complaint says, who told him she had fallen on financial hardships and took the money to pay bills. Semancik said she did repay $3,000 for a check she wrote to a concrete company that did work on her home, but never tried to repay the rest of the money.
She will make her initial appearance in court Thursday.
