Affidavit: Women stole $5.3M from company

Two women accused of stealing nearly $5.3 million from a Morgan City company over a 15-year time period were arraigned Monday in 16th Judicial District Court, according to an affidavit for arrest warrant.
Karen Dehart Duhon, 59, of the 1500 block of Sixth Street in Morgan City, and Donna Sue Peveto, 58, of the 5400 block of West Park Avenue in Houma, were arraigned Monday.
Duhon was charged on eight counts of theft more than $1,500 totaling $1,233,000 while Peveto was charged on seven counts for theft more than $1,500 totaling $633,700, from Capital Management Consultants Inc. in Morgan City, according to affidavits.
Peveto was arrested July 24, and Duhon was arrested July 29.
The affidavit states that from 1999 to 2014, Capital Management Consultants Inc., identified $2,869,000 in suspected fraudulent transactions from Duhon and $2,426,630 in suspected fraudulent transactions from Peveto.
According to an affidavit, on March 25, Morgan City police detectives began an investigation into a suspected theft against Capital Management Consultant Inc. Members of the company’s board of directors and the company’s certified public accountant met with detectives. Detectives were told that the company’s president, Scott Tucker, had passed away in January 2014.
After Tucker’s death, the shareholders arrived at the business to begin examining the operations of the company, according to the affidavit. Upon a brief initial investigation by the company’s accountant, officials suspected that a large amount of money had been misappropriated from the company, the affidavit said.
After learning of the missing funds, shareholders started to examine the company’s ledger and issued checks, at which time they learned that checks written to Duhon had been altered from $1,000 and $500 to $14,000 and $4,500, respectively, each month, the affidavit said.
The documents were turned over to police for further investigation. A detective observed the ledgers and check stubs for Capital Management Consultants Inc. for 2012 and saw that checks paid to Duhon were listed on the ledger and stubs as $1,000 and $500, the affidavit said.
However, upon viewing the checks for the said dates, the detective observed that the checks were written in the amount of $4,500 and $14,000, the affidavit said. This practice was observed to have occurred every month during 2012 and continued throughout 2013 into early 2014, the affidavit stated.
Police learned that the only other employee with access to the company’s fund besides Tucker was Duhon, the company’s part-time bookkeeper, the affidavit said. A search warrant was conducted at Duhon’s office, which yielded the discovery of numerous deposit slips for $14,000 and $4,500 that had been deposited into a Midsouth Bank account labeled as “Capital Management Consultant Inc. Armond Duhon,” the affidavit stated. Armond Duhon was verified to be Karen Duhon’s husband, according to the affidavit.
After conducting a forensic audit of the company’s financial records, police discovered that Karen Duhon and Peveto had systematically taken money from Capital Management Consultants Inc., dating back at least from 1999 to 2014, the affidavit said.