ROCKLEDGE, Fla. – The office manager for a Rockledge law firm and her husband were arrested Tuesday, accused of stealing $1 million from the business over several years.
Rockledge police say the law firm’s owner reached out after a bank notified him in March that a legal trust fund was out of money.
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When the owner investigated, he noticed Donna Waterman and her husband, Oliver, made hundreds of transfers from the law firm’s accounts to a PayPal account between October 2020 and March 2024. The amounts of the transactions at first ran between $200 and $10,000 and were initiated by Donna Waterman via her work email address.
Through a case audit, the law firm’s owner told detectives that Donna Waterman, who was also a paralegal, signed up for a case without his permission or knowledge, and had the funds from that case put into a particular legal trust fund. Since none of this information was on the books, detectives say Waterman was able to later transfer large sums, as much as $40,000 per transfer, from that trust fund, without the owner knowing.
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Detectives say only Donna Waterman and the owner of the law firm had access to all of the firm’s funds, and they accuse Waterman of falsifying the firm’s account books to hide the transactions.
Detectives say, in all, they found more than $1.1 million had been taken from the law firm and its clients and transferred to accounts belonging to the Watermans. They say the money was used for personal expenses, including cruises and gambling at casinos.
Donna Waterman faces charges of money laundering, false entry in books of a business entity, grand theft greater than $100,000, and other charges.
Oliver Waterman faces charges of money laundering, grand theft greater than $100,000 and other charges.
They’re being held without bond.
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