Not exactly chicken feed

Holli Dawn Coulman yesterday (August 27) pleaded guilty to defrauding Hewlett-Packard of almost $1 million between 2008 and 2012. She was an executive assistant to a senior vice president of a San Diego branch of the company. She had access to American Express corporate credit cards.

She admitted that instead of using the cards for legitimate company purposes, she used them to support her luxurious lifestyle — $100,000 spent at La Costa, more than $43,000 at Pebble Beach, thousands on air trips to Hawaii and Europe, more thousands to purchase items at Apple stores, and more than $350,000 to pay for her brother's business expenses.

As revealed in U.S. Court, she was skillful at covering up her expenditures: she intercepted and deleted emails that questioned her expenses, and she fabricated receipts, invoices, and even letters from her boss justifying her expenditures.