A bookkeeper convicted of setting her place of employment ablaze to cover up the disappearance of more than $700,000 under her watch was sentenced Friday to nearly six years in prison.
Carey Alice Hernandez was found guilty by a San Diego federal jury of setting fire to Off Road Warehouse, where she worked as a bookkeeper. No one was injured in the March 28, 2019, early morning blaze.
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According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, as the Balboa Avenue business went up in flames, surveillance footage captured an SUV with dark wheel rims near the scene of the fire. The same SUV was spotted on surveillance footage near Hernandez's home, prosecutors said.
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One day after the fire, Hernandez sent "misleading texts" to co- workers in order to convince them her SUV's wheel rims were light rather than dark and similarly lied about the wheel rims to agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, according to prosecutors.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said after Off Road Warehouse's owner decided to sell the business in late 2018, the purchaser conducted an audit that revealed $744,621 went missing during Hernandez's time as bookkeeper and controller in charge of the company books and records.
The prosecution's sentencing brief states the 2019 fire was not the first at the business. In November of 2018, one month after Hernandez learned of the audit, a fire started in the room containing the company's financial documents. Paint thinner was found in that room and Hernandez told the company's owner that she was painting in there.
Hernandez was convicted last summer and sentenced Friday to 70 months in prison.
