People v. Traster

Facts

The Defendant, Traster, owned a computer consulting business. He was hired by a law firm to be their computer administrator. His duties included converting the firm from an older word processing system to Windows and Microsoft Word and training the staff and attorneys on how to use the new programs.

Two years after he was hired, he met with the Stevens, the law firm’s administrator, and informed her that the firm was not in legal compliance because it did not have Microsoft licenses for all of its computers. The Defendant explained he did research on the internet and could obtain the required licenses at a large discount from Billpoint Company. The Defendant told Stevens the cost to acquire the licenses for all of the firms computers would be $37,290.94. Neither Stevens nor any of the other people supervising the Defendant had knowledge about computers. Stevens told the Defendant she would present the proposal to the firm’s partners. The Defendant filled out a purchase order showing the price for the required 65 licenses needed. A few weeks later, the partners gave their approval for the expenditure to acquire the licenses. The Defendant was given the firm’s credit card to buy the licenses from Billpoint Company, the company the Defendant named on the purchase order.

A few days later, the Defendant resigned from his position. Before he left, Stevens asked the Defendant if the licenses had been received and if so, where he had put them. The Defendant stated they were in a locked filing cabinet in a the paralegal office of the firm, which was a lie as no licenses for the firm had been obtained. Stevens could not find the licenses and reported this to one of the firm’s partners.

The next morning, the partner and Stevens called the Billpoint Company and discovered they were not a vendor of any product, not a software company, and did not sell software licenses. Instead, they discovered Billpoint was a credit card processing company for E-Bay and other online transactions, functioning only as a clearing house between buyers and sellers. The senior fraud investigator at Billpoint explained that the Defendant established a seller’s account with them in the name of his consulting firm at his residence address. He then charged two amounts totaling $37,290.94 to the law firm’s credit card to purchase some bundled software licenses from his consulting company. The transactions were posted to Billpoint and the law firm’s credit account was charged accordingly. The law firm’s partner canceled the transaction with Billpoint both verbally and in writing before the Defendant’s company could be credited.

The charge to the law firm’s credit card was reversed. However, due to this transaction, the law firm’s credit line was reduced by the amount for a month. The firm ultimately purchased the needed software licenses for an amount of $20,000. The Defendant was charged with and convicted of theft by false pretenses.