Former Kilby Elementary principal guilty of embezzlement in Virginia

FROM INSIDENOVA.COM -

The former Kilby Elementary School principal has pleaded guilty to using a school-issued credit card to make thousands of dollars of personal purchases.


Jenny Georgina Enriquez De Bermant, 48, of 3068 Vidalia Court in Dumfries, pleaded guilty Thursday in Prince William Circuit Court to embezzlement.

Bermant was arrested on May 3, after police and school officials investigated reports of financial irregularities at the Woodbridge area school.

Prosecutors said an internal auditor with Prince William County Schools began an investigation in April, after receiving a call from an anonymous Kilby employee, stating the school’s credit card had been used to buy several items that could not be found in the school.

The auditor identified 55 items purchased on that credit card between June 5, 2011 and March 4, 2012 and conducted an inventory at the school on April 17, finding just 13 of those items there, court documents state.

Prosecutors said Bermant told the auditor that if she came back in a week, she would search the school and find the missing items.

The auditor returned a week later and found most of the items, but school employees said they did not know where they had come from.

A school division risk management investigator went to the school on April 26 to investigate the case, court documents state. The investigator spoke to Bermant, who first said the school was having bookkeeping problems and later admitted that she used the credit card to make personal purchases, including Christmas gifts for her children.

Bermant told police she and her husband were having financial trouble, and she did not want their three children to know, prosecutors said.

According to a search warrant on file in Prince William Circuit Court, Bermant used the credit card to buy televisions, curtains, iPhones, MacBook laptops and an iPad, among other things.

The personal items Bermant purchased with the school credit card totaled over $17,000, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Bermant also arranged for one of her neighbors to sell a piano to the school for over $4,000. Investigators learned that the piano was Bermant’s and was not needed by the school.

Bermant remains free on bond and faces up to 20 years in prison when she is sentenced on Jan. 3.