Just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes a story that is so unbelievable it has to be true. On Monday, the Manhattan Supreme Court sent Victoria Wofford to prison for stealing $17 million from American Express and $8 million from a client.
Seems Wofford, a Manhattan travel agent, was trying to get a number of initiatives off the ground. Over the course of four years, she used defunct business travel accounts and overbilled an existing client for travel booked through her company and used the fraudulent money to launch a software development business, buy an apartment in Florida, invest in a restaurant chain, and support herself while writing a paranormal romance novel.
Her plan to repay American Express—before the credit card company caught on—fell through when the software business didn’t go as planned and interest in the novel went nowhere.
Though Wofford pleaded guilty to her crime, she actually told the judge, “I’m not sure what I was thinking at the time, it may have had something to do with the undiagnosed sleep apnea that I apparently suffered from for many, many years.”
For folks who’ve been diagnosed with sleep apnea and have taken steps to treat it, you know it’s a serious sleep disorder. According to the National Sleep Foundation, sleep apnea causes patients to stop breathing briefly and repeatedly during sleep. Untreated, sleep apnea causes disturbed sleep and excessive sleepiness during the day and can lead to high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, heart attack, cardiac arrhythmia, stroke or depression.
But can it cause a lack of judgment? Enough to steal $25 million?
What do you think?
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