Over 300 counts added to theft case

The 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office has added 320 more theft charges against defendants in the alleged multimillion-dollar theft scheme against Capital Management Consultants by the company’s former CPA and two other ex-employees. The ex-CPA and one of the other former employees are now deceased.
Company officials of the Morgan City-based investment holdings company have alleged theft of up to $30 million, possibly dating back to the early 1980s.
This week, prosecutors amended the original bill of information filed June 20, 2015, to include a total of 674 counts of theft of $1,500 or more against defendants in the case. The original bill collectively charged the defendants with one count of racketeering, 354 counts of theft of $1,500 or more and 100 counts of money laundering.
The added counts pertain to thefts that occurred from Jan. 5, 1999, to Jan. 10, 2014. The original theft charges happened from March 15, 2001, through March 25, 2014.
The defendants included Karen Duhon, a former bookkeeper; her husband Armond Duhon; Donnasue Peveto, a former assistant bookkeeper and assistant to management; the Duhons’ company A-B-C Siding Co. of Morgan City; and Nelson-Tucker, which was owned by Scott Tucker.
Tucker died in January 2014 before the alleged theft was discovered. Peveto, 59, of Houma, died March 27 of natural causes.
Capital Management alleged in a December 2014 lawsuit that Tucker was the leader behind a conspiracy to steal money from the company along with former bookkeeper Karen Duhon, dating back possibly to the early 1980s. Company officials also alleged that Karen Duhon and Tucker had a romantic relationship.
Peveto found out about Tucker and Karen Duhon’s theft from the company so they paid her to stay quiet, Capital Management spokesman Marwan Mohey-El-Dien said.
Mohey-El-Dien’s wife, Laura Guarisco, daughter of the late Peter V. Guarisco, the company’s founder, discovered the theft after Tucker died, Mohey-El-Dien said.
The counts of theft of $1,500 or more and money laundering in the bill stem from numerous checks deposited into Peveto’s personal bank account or Karen Duhon’s and Armond Duhon’s account, according to the bill of information. Many of the checks were executed by Tucker, the documents stated.
Prosecutor Rob Vines explained where the added theft counts came from.
“Basically what it was, it’s all the checks that were written directly to Karen Duhon,” Vines said.
In the theft scheme, the alleged co-conspirators wrote checks from Capital Management to Peveto, and Peveto would deposit the checks into her personal account, Vines said. Peveto would then write a check to Karen Duhon for half of the amount of the checks Peveto deposited in her own account, Vines said.
“There was an oversight where, on those particular days, there were also separate individual checks written directly to Karen Duhon,” Vines said.
The original bill also alleged that the group participated in a “pattern of racketeering activity” as employees or associates of a criminal enterprise.
The criminal activity entailed the “theft of large sums of cash through fraud, deception and subterfuge” along with the “conversion and taking of assets with intent to defraud” and “theft by fraudulent transfer of immovable property through fraud, deception, forgery, misappropriation, and subterfuge,” the bill stated.
Before Peveto’s death, she had pleaded guilty Dec. 9, 2015, to one count of racketeering and 123 counts of theft over $1,500 and had agreed to testify against her co-defendants. She faced up to 25 years in prison.
Karen Duhon, Armond Duhon, A-B-C Siding Co. of Morgan City and Nelson-Tucker will be re-arraigned Nov. 9 on the new theft counts.