Diane Backis, 50, of Athens, New York, pleaded guilty to mail fraud and filing a false income tax return. Backis was responsible for accounting functions in Albany related to Cargill’s grain operations, including creating customer contracts, generating and mailing invoices, and receiving and processing customer payments. As part of her plea, Backis admitted that she defrauded Cargill while working in its Port of Albany facility, which receives, stores and sells grain products.

As part of her plea, Backis admitted that she stole hundreds of customer payments sent to Cargill totaling at least $3,115,610 and deposited them into her personal bank accounts. Backis also regularly created fraudulent invoices and mailed them to Cargill’s customers. The fraudulent invoices charged Cargill’s customers prices substantially less than what Cargill paid to acquire the grain products, causing Cargill significant financial losses. The fraudulent invoices also directed Cargill’s customers to send payment directly to Backis, thereby bypassing Cargill’s corporate controls. To hide her activities, Backis made false entries into Cargill’s accounting software to make it appear that customers were paying prices higher than those in her fraudulent invoices and that customers owed Cargill millions of dollars for delivered grain products, only to reverse those false entries. As a result, Cargill lost at least $25 million.

Backis faces up to 20 years in prison, a three-year term of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000 when she is sentenced on March 28, 2017, by U.S. District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino in Albany. As part of her guilty plea, Backis has agreed to pay Cargill at least $3.5 million in restitution and to forfeiture of her house in Athens, an investment brokerage account and her Cargill pension benefits.  

For the entire news release, click here.

—From the U.S. Department of Justice news release