After a four-day trial, a DeKalb woman was found guilty on Thursday of a years-long embezzlement scheme, stealing more than $1.9 million from her employer, Cole Pallet Services, by writing and cashing in more than 100 fraudulent paychecks.

Paa’Shion T. Mhoon, 36, faces up to 60 years in prison for her Class X felony convictions. She’s required to serve at least 50%.

Assistant state’s attorneys Brooks Locke and Daniel Regna alleged that Mhoon did it because she wanted to live an extravagant lifestyle that she couldn’t afford on her regular salary.

“The devil may wear Prada, but Paa’Shion Mhoon? She wears Chanel,” Regna said.

Jury deliberations began about 5 p.m. By 6:30 p.m., jurors found her guilty on all counts: Misappropriation of financial institution property exceeding $1 million, continuing a financial crimes enterprise, theft exceeding $1 million, and three counts of forgery.

Mhoon worked as a bookkeeper and handled payroll when she was at Cole Pallet. She worked there from 2014 to her termination in May 2023. The embezzlement investigation started after Ted Strack, who had been hired as an independent financial consultant for Cole Pallet, began reviewing the company’s books and noticed some discrepancies, prosecutors said. Strack also testfied this week.

Prosecutors argued over three days of witness testimony that for about six years, Mhoon intentionally forged fake paper paychecks and then cashed them at Resource Bank and Walmart in DeKalb. In the company’s accounting software, she also wrote herself thousands in unauthorized direct deposit checks.

Mhoon appeared calm while her verdict was read, and did not react visibly. She’s been out on electronic home monitoring since she was charged on May 29, 2023. Circuit Court Judge Marcy Buick revoked Mhoon’s bond Thursday. A sheriff’s deputy took her into custody.

Mhoon will remain held in DeKalb County Jail as she awaits sentencing at 10 a.m. July 16.

Two stories, one verdict

Founded in 2014, DeKalb-based Cole Pallet Services – a pallet manufacturer and supply distributor – is owned by brothers Brett and John Cole. Mhoon’s boss was Brett Cole, the company’s co-owner and president. He testified twice this week. Cole Pallet Services has several subsidiaries, including two companies based in Florida.

Michael Doyle, Mhoon’s defense lawyer, didn’t dispute that Mhoon was paid the large sums of money, as multiple bank and Cole Pallet accounting records showed.

But Doyle emphasized in his arguments that prosecutors couldn’t prove that those payments weren’t all authorized. And Mhoon said her work responsibilities grew over the years.

“Paa’Shion did what Mr. Cole told her to do,” Doyle said.

But no one was keeping a close eye on the company’s accounting records because that was Mhoon’s job, prosecutors said in arguments. Authorities alleged she bought personal items on the company’s Amazon account and had them sent to her home, court filings show.

During a May 2023 warrant search, DeKalb police found 96 luxury items in Mhoon’s home – purses, bags, and shoes from Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Balenciaga. They found high-end customized jewelry from Treasurer’s Jewelry in Chicago, and two large multi-gallon water jugs stuffed with about $5,100 in cash. In total, police found about $17,000 in cash in her home, Regna said.

Prosecutors tracked under-the-table accounting that showed major discrepancies in Mhoon’s salary payout and the sometimes multiple paychecks she received in the same pay period.

In one weeklong pay period in August 2022, she was paid her salaried amount of $761, records showed. She got another check for $1,138 in the same week, which Regna argued was forged. And then $18,042 more that week in a direct deposit, also unauthorized.

In another week, she received five paychecks. Four were fraudulent, records showed.

Prosecutors pointed to bank records and employee payroll documents that showed that between August 2017 and August 2020, Mhoon received $43,212 total in paychecks outside of her regular salary, and $115,165 more between August 2020 and April 2023. They alleged she forged Brett Cole’s signature on paper paychecks, then cashed them out.

In total, Mhoon embezzled more than $1.9 million over the course of six years at a family-owned local business that was just finding its feet, prosecutors said.

Regna said Mhoon had betrayed Brett Cole’s trust in her greed.

“He trusted her,” Regna said. “She was a valuable employee. She earned his confidence. And once she had that confidence, then he quit watching.”

But Mhoon, in her own testimony, painted a different picture, one of a dedicated employee who went above and beyond office work for years. She took the stand in her own defense for nearly two hours on Thursday.

She said she worked upwards of 60-hour weeks. She said she was in charge of bookkeeping for Cole Pallet Services and multiple of its holding companies and subsidiaries. She said she’d often get to the office about 6 a.m. or earlier, so that she could leave by 3:15 p.m. to care for her family. She said she sometimes worked Saturdays. She said she often received monthly bonuses.

And she alleged that Brett Cole asked her to do unlawful things, which Cole later denied in his own testimony.

Her W-2s reflected only her salaried wages at Cole Pallet, not the extra income prosecutors argued was fraudulent that she siphoned off for herself between 2017 and 2023. And she knowingly didn’t report that income on her state or federal taxes, she said in testimony.

“And you recognize that the testimony you’re giving, the actions you took are in violation of law, right?” Locke said to Mhoon.

“Yes. I do recognize that. Just doing what I was told,” Mhoon said.

Mhoon alleged in testimony that Brett Cole asked her to pay multiple people off the books so their employment didn’t show up on record. She said the reason she was given multiple paychecks was so that she could cash them out and distribute them to multiple employees under the radar. Then Brett paid her extra for her discretion and told her to keep quiet, she alleged.

She babysat his children. She went shopping on his behalf for his wife. And she was paid for that work through inflated Cole Pallet paychecks, she alleged in testimony.

“Why did you do all these things for Brett?” Doyle said to Mhoon.

“At that time, he was my boss, and I did whatever he said, and he took care of me,” she said in reply. “He always made sure I was taken care of.”

“But it’s also fair to say you were generously compensated?” Doyle said.

“That is correct,” Mhoon said.

But taking the stand for the second time this week on Thursday, Brett offered conflicting testimony.

He told the jury that Mhoon worked, on average, a 40-hour week, wasn’t given regular bonuses, and that he didn’t authorize her to cut additional paychecks or pay people in cash.

Mhoon said Brett Cole was a regular part of the payroll approval process through Resource Bank. They both had a fob device for security authentication while processing payroll deposits. But Brett testified that he didn’t know how and had never done payroll, and had given Mhoon his fob so that she could do the process herself.

He said his business’s insurance paid him back $50,000 of the stolen money, and that he didn’t blame the bank for Cole Pallet’s internal accounting circumstances.

“Did you ever instruct the defendant to pay herself an additional paycheck to pay cash to other people to keep them off the books?” Regna said to Brett.

“Never,” Brett Cole said in reply.