Philip said he hired Deborah Ann Gore in 2005 to do the books for his businesses, which includes a chain of car repair shops.

“She worked in the Carlsbad office,” Philip said. Deborah Gore did all the bookwork, he said, including generating paychecks for employees and paying vendors. There was no signature stamp and Gore was not allowed to sign checks, so Philip believed he retained control by personally signing each check.

In late 2010, someone from Union Bank phoned Philip. “Their fraud department detected some signatures they did not think were right,” Philip recalled. “They wanted me to come in right away.” He hurried to the bank to look at the questionable checks. “They were not my signatures,” he confirmed. “They were all forgeries.”

Philip said his wife helped him go through their computerized accounting, and together they found about $11,000 in checks made out to Deborah Gore they believed were fraudulent.

Philip and his wife called Deborah Gore into their offices the next day and confronted her. “She admitted doing it,” Philip remembered.

Philip’s wife Kathleen agreed, “Yes, she said, ‘Well, I’m not going to deny it.’” But the disgraced bookkeeper was not anxious to leave. “She offered to work for free and she offered to pay it back,” Kathleen remembered.

“She wanted to work it out,” Philip agreed. “I said no way. At that point I wanted her out of there.” The bookkeeper was escorted out, and the locks were changed on the doors, wife Kathleen said.

Four months ago, Philip said he got a letter from Deborah Gore. “She was intimidating me,” he claimed. Philip said that in the letter, his former bookkeeper was threatening to go the IRS with accusations if he didn’t “drop all the charges.”

Philip testified in San Diego’s North County Superior Courthouse yesterday afternoon, August 21, 2013. “So we are sitting here today because I would not drop all the charges,” he said from the witness box.

Carlsbad police detective Scott Stallman was a witness at the same hearing, during which Deborah Ann Gore was held to answer nearly forty felonies. Officer Stallman testified that more than $160,000 was stolen, and about $90,000 of that was directly deposited into Gore’s own account.

Deborah Ann Gore pleads not-guilty to all charges through her public defender. She is currently held in lieu of $300,000 bail at Las Colinas women’s jail in Santee, California, and her next court date is set for October 10, 2013.

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2013/aug/22/51816/

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2013/aug/22/51817/