A former manager of a nonprofit veterinary clinic in West Virginia has admitted that he stole more than $624,000 from his employer and lost the entire amount to an online gambling addiction.
Fake Invoices and Payrolls
J.T.V. pleaded guilty on September 28 to a federal money laundering charge connected to the theft from Help for Animals, a veterinary clinic in Barboursville, West Virginia.
The 43-year-old was responsible for managing the clinic from about February 2018 until February 2025. Among other administrative duties, he was supposed to handle payroll and vendor payments.
His annual salary had reached about $110,000 by December 2024, according to his plea agreement.
Court documents say V. started to divert money from the nonprofit around October 2022 by using his access to the clinic’s finances to issue payroll checks and other payments he was not entitled to receive to himself.
He also created fake vendor invoices, arranged for the clinic to pay them, and directed the money into his personal bank account.
The scheme eventually brought him $624,599.86.
“I Was Addicted to Online Gambling”
In the statement that he signed, V. directly attributed the theft to his gambling addiction.
“I initiated and continued my embezzlement scheme because I was addicted to online gambling,” he said.
He also stated that all of the money taken from the clinic had been lost through gambling.
The court documents do not identify the gambling websites that V. chose to use. They also do not say whether he played with licensed operators in West Virginia or used offshore gambling platforms.
Employees at Help for Animals told WSAZ-TV that the nonprofit was left roughly $200,000 in the red after the theft. Staff said the missing funds could otherwise have helped pay for employees, equipment and veterinary treatment for animals whose owners could not afford the full cost of care.
V.’s guilty plea is specifically related to a $20,000 transaction dated on October 11, 2023, when he transferred the respective amount from his personal checking account into a savings account, knowing that the money originated from his fraud against the clinic.
Under the plea agreement, V. has agreed to pay $624,599.86 in restitution and cooperate with authorities in identifying assets that could be used to compensate the nonprofit.
The man is now facing a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison, up to three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000.
V. is scheduled to be sentenced on February 16, 2027. The final sentence will be determined by the federal court.
In 2024, we reported on a similar case of a senior finance manager who faced a serious sentence for stealing over GBP 930,000 ($1,230,000) of taxpayers’ money to feed his gambling needs.
Similarly, in the same year, we spoke about a 40-year-old former TBS bank cashier from Aberdeen, Scotland, who started to steal money for precisely the same reason, reaching GBP 30,000 ($38,900) by the time he was caught.