They embezzle because they like it. They like the rush. They need money now, not in five years. They like being smarter than the drudges they figure are around

They embezzle because they like it. They like the rush. They need money now, not in five years. They like being smarter than the drudges they figure are around them. And they embezzle, I am convinced, because they want to get caught sooner or later and that pattern is usually repeated over and over. You can embezzle for some of the reasons listed above, and not others. Or something completely different, like a conviction that the victim (which could be an employer or government agency or cofounder) owes you for some real or imagined damage or injustice. And some people do it for love. There was a case a few years back involving a nebbish CFO at an old-school family-run firm, Alden Shoe Company. This guy was utterly besotted with a former TV news anchor who was trying to start her own entertainment brand, and embezzled millions to fund her business and impress her as a moneyed knight in shining armor. He stole the money from a reserve account and family trust, and wasn't particularly smart about it: In 2011, according to criminal and civil court filings, Hajjar started writing checks to himself from that Santander account and depositing them in his personal bank accounts. That year, he wrote himself eight checks totaling $585,000. The next year, 17 checks for $1.2 million. He also transferred money from the cash reserve to a defunct Alden trust account, and then over to his personal accounts. In 2013, he used this method to take $1.2 million, and again to steal $4 million in 2014—the same year de la Garza started Lucky Gal Productions. ... At the end of each year, Hajjar simply moved money from an Alden line of credit into the Santander account, so everything looked copasetic for the year-end review. Then, after a successful review, he returned the borrowed funds to the Alden line of credit and no one was the wiser that the Santander account was missing money. https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2021/07/13/richard-hajjar-bianca-de-la-garza-alden/ https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2021/07/13/richard-hajja... The theft totalled $17 million. He didn't try hard to cover his tracks, and when the CEO of the shoe company figured it out, he admitted it right away. I don't think this guy was a born con artist or serial grifter or particularly brilliant. He'd been with the same company his entire career, and there wasn't any evidence of earlier embezzlement until he met the TV personality. I think he got 5 years in prison.