A State Department employee managed to steal more than $650,000 over two years by using her access to a government checkbook account to write herself 60 checks.
Levita Almuete Ferrer used a department QuickBooks account to generate the checks, listing herself — or in a few cases, an associate — as the payee. After printing the checks, she went into QuickBooks and altered the name to an actual State Department vendor.
That meant anyone who saw the entries wouldn’t know she was paying herself, and it would take an audit trail to figure out what she’d done.
Ferrer told a federal court Wednesday that the $657,347.50 that she stole has been “dissipated” and can no longer be clawed back by the government. Ferrer, as part of her plea to a charge of theft of government property, agreed to try to pay back the money.
Ferrer had access to the payment account through her job as a senior budget analyst for the department’s Office of the Chief of Protocol.
Authorities said in addition to the 60 checks she wrote herself, including to the alias Levita Brezovic, she wrote three checks “to another individual with whom she had a personal relationship.”
She deposited all 63 checks into her own checking and savings accounts.
In one example, she admitted to writing Check NO. 3386 for $9,750 on March 6, 2024 to Levita Brezovic. She then deposited it into her checking account on April 15, 2024.
She endorsed the check and wrote “For Mobile Deposit” on it.
She then changed the QuickBooks entry to appear that the money went to a State Department vendor.
