A St. Charles County woman was sentenced on Apr. 8 to 90 months in prison for embezzling $3.8 million from her employer, with assistance from co-conspirators in China, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri.
The case highlights a significant instance of international financial crime affecting a local business and its owner, who is now unable to retire and has been forced to sell assets to keep the company operational.
U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Clark ordered Bridget Thebeau, 46, to repay the stolen funds after she pleaded guilty in May 2025 to five counts of wire fraud. Her attorneys brought checks totaling $104,500 as partial restitution during sentencing.
According to court documents, Thebeau conspired with some of her employer’s suppliers in China between 2015 and 2023 by inflating purchase orders and issuing fictitious ones in exchange for kickbacks. She altered or fabricated over 230 purchase orders totaling $3.82 million; more than half of that amount was wired directly into her personal bank account by overseas associates.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin Ladendorf said in a sentencing memo that Thebeau’s actions were “motivated purely by greed,” noting there were no drug problems or financial hardships behind her conduct. Judge Clark described the scheme as one of the worst he has seen while serving on the bench.
To conceal her activities, Thebeau used fraudulent shipping labels and bills of lading from Chinese suppliers, created fake invoices purportedly sent to customers, and provided false information to company management and accountants. After discovery of the embezzlement, she attempted further cover-up by deleting records from company servers, submerging her laptop in water, trying to destroy evidence on her cell phone, and erasing cloud-stored data as revealed during testimony at Monday’s hearing.
The U.S. Secret Service and Chesterfield Police Department investigated this case.
