Shivani Patel, former executive assistant of a Waltham-based technology company, will plead guilty to charges that placed her in connection with a fraud and embezzlement scheme that made over $3 million, according to the District of Massachusetts Attorney’s Office. The Martha’s Vineyard Times reported that the name of the specific Waltham company for which Patel worked had not been released.

The scheme involved Patel creating a fake company that had the same name as the company she was working at with an ‘S’ added at the end. She then deposited customers’ checks into that fraudulent account and “concealed her embezzlement by making false entries in her employer’s billing system,” according to an Oct. 8 Waltham Patch article.

As an executive assistant, Patel’s duties included getting checks for her employer from the mail, marking the checks as present in the employers’ system and then depositing them, according to the District of Massachusetts Attorney’s Office. These duties allowed Patel to keep running her scheme for over five years — from Feb. 2012 to July 2017, according to the Waltham Patch.

Patel concealed the scam further by funneling the money through multiple bank accounts, and she did not disclose stolen money on her income taxes. The amount embezzled reached a total of $3,076,369.

Patel used this money to buy a car, as well as a house in Martha’s Vineyard, according to the Martha’s Vineyard Times. 

The District of Massachusetts Attorney’s Office reported that the government will recommend 57 months in prison, as well as three years of supervised release and “a fine between $20,000 and $200,000, restitution and forfeiture,” as a result of the plea bargain.

Bank fraud can lead to a sentence of up to 30 years in prison, five years of supervised release and a fine of $1 million, which would be combined with charges of money laundering as well as tax evasion.