Former Ennis employee charged over alleged $700,000 embezzlement

What happened

A federal grand jury in Atlanta added 26 wire fraud charges against former Ennis Paint employee DeMarco Doxie on 23 April 2013 over allegations that he embezzled more than $700,000 from his employer.

The US Department of Justice announcement, published the following day by the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, is the source of this report. Doxie had first been indicted in March 2013 on 21 mail fraud counts.

Prosecutors alleged that the scheme ran from June 2007 to August 2011. They said Doxie channelled company money to Outlook Environmental & Safety Solutions, LLC, a business he had established and owned, through two payment routes.

The first involved invoices for environmental services that Outlook purportedly supplied to Ennis. According to prosecutors, Doxie submitted the invoices knowing that no work had been done and that Outlook had no employees.

The second involved a company-issued American Express card intended for business expenses. The revised indictment alleged that Doxie used it to pay Outlook for services it had not provided, with Ennis subsequently settling the monthly card bills.

Prosecutors said Ennis did not know that Doxie owned Outlook and would not have authorised either type of payment had it known. The amount alleged to have been diverted exceeded $700,000 across the two methods; the announcement did not give a separate total for each.

The background

Doxie, then 43 and living in Peachtree City, Georgia, was Ennis’s corporate environmental health and safety manager. He worked at its Atlanta facility.

Ennis was headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and made road-marking products and pavement surface treatments. The Justice Department identified the company as Ennis-Flint at the time of its announcement.

The alleged invoices concerned the same broad subject area as Doxie’s management role: environmental work. That connection is relevant to insider risk because an employee’s specialist responsibilities can place them close to decisions about services and spending, rather than only to sensitive information or computer systems.

The alleged use of both supplier invoices and a corporate card also highlights the distinction between checking a payment and confirming the underlying service. A bill or card entry records a transaction; it does not, by itself, establish that work was completed or disclose who ultimately owns the recipient business.

For organisations, those are separate questions for financial oversight: whether services were delivered, whether a supplier has an undisclosed connection to an employee, and whether card spending has a legitimate business purpose. The announcement did not describe Ennis’s approval procedures or explain how the alleged conduct was discovered, so it does not establish which controls were absent or bypassed.

Financial misuse is one strand of insider risk, alongside misuse of data or technical access. A separate Alaska tribal embezzlement case involving an accountant concerned the theft of colleagues’ identities and more than $98,000. That case reached a restitution order; the Ennis announcement concerned allegations at the charging stage.

What people are saying

US Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said Doxie had abused the trust attached to an important company position. She described the alleged theft as repeated conduct over an extended period and said employees who stole from their employers should expect to face accountability.

What happens next

The revised indictment contained 47 counts in total. A superseding indictment replaces an earlier indictment and can add charges, as happened here with the wire fraud allegations.

The Justice Department said each count carried a possible maximum of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Those were statutory limits, not a sentence imposed on Doxie. Any sentencing decision would take account of the non-binding US Sentencing Guidelines.

At the time of the announcement, FBI special agents were investigating the case and Assistant US Attorney Glenn D. Baker was prosecuting it. The release did not provide a trial date or a subsequent outcome.

Doxie was presumed innocent. The indictment set out accusations, and prosecutors would have to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt at trial.