Today Carol Passaro, 62, was sentenced to three years in prison for Scheme to Defraud in Collier County. Her sentence will be followed by one year of community control and eight years of probation. The court also ordered her to pay restitution. She pled straight to the court on February 15th. Every defendant has a right to forgo having a jury trial and plead straight to the judge for a sentence.
Passaro was the store manager of the Save-A-Lot grocery store located in East Naples. Between April 2008 and August 2014, the defendant perpetrated a scheme to defraud where the money from the daily cashier drawers would be moved to a secure safe that only Passaro had access to. She would adjust the nightly cash reports that went to the regional corporate office to account for money she moved from one safe to the other to hide her ongoing theft.
The defendant’s scheme was discovered when she was transferred to become a manager at another store. The new manager of her store discovered that $275,132 was missing from the secured safe. When questioned by corporate officers, the defendant confessed to stealing all of the missing money to fuel her gambling and drug addiction habits.
Assistant State Attorney Tino Cimato of our Economic Crimes Unit handled the case.
Samantha Syoen
Communications Director
State Attorney’s Office
ssyoen@sao20.org
239-533-1125