After allegedly embezzling over $686,000 from his former employer, a 51-year-old Oxnard man was arrested last week for felony charges of grand theft and five counts of filing a false tax return.
Freddy Orlando Pachon is accused of stealing funds from Select Staffing, located in Santa Barbara, after serving as the company’s vice president of risk management and overseeing the business’s Worker’s Compensation claims.
Following a four-month investigation, Santa Barbara PD Detective Greg Hons obtained a $700,000 warrant for the arrest of Pachon, in addition to a search warrant for Pachon’s Oxnard residence. On Friday, Hons and a team of SBPD and Oxnard PD investigators, as well as agents from the California Franchise Tax Board, served Pachon with both warrants, arresting him for the felony charges and booking him into Santa Barbara County Jail.
According to an SBPD press release, Select Staffing first contacted officials about Pachon’s embezzlement scheme back in May, when an internal audit revealed he had stolen company funds over a four-year span. While managing Worker’s Compensation claims for Select Staffing, Pachon had all funds from medical bill invoices deposited into his personal bank account, from January 2008 to December 2012, and failed to declare these embezzled funds as income when filing income taxes, according to an SBPD press release.