Levita Almuete Ferrer, 64, of Montgomery Village, Maryland, pleaded guilty today to embezzling more than $650,000 from the U.S. State Department over a two-year period.<\/p>\n
The guilty plea was announced by U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr., Special Agent in Charge Benjamin Brockschmidt of the U.S. Department of State\u2019s Office of Inspector General, and Deputy Assistant Director William Ferrari of the State Department\u2019s Diplomatic Security Service Office of Special Investigations.<\/p>\n
As part of her guilty plea, Ferrer, who is also known as Levita Brezovic, admitted that she abused her signature authority over a State Department checking account between March 2022 and April 2024 while working as a Senior Budget Analyst in the State Department\u2019s Office of the Chief of Protocol. She issued 60 checks payable to herself and three checks payable to another individual with whom she had a personal relationship. She printed and signed each check and then deposited all 63 checks, which totaled $657,347.50, into her personal checking and savings accounts.<\/p>\n
Ferrer attempted to conceal her scheme by using a common Quickbooks account at the State Department. After entering her name as the payee on checks in Quickbooks and then printing them, she often changed the listed payee in Quickbooks from herself to an actual State Department vendor. As a result, anyone viewing those entries in the Quickbooks system did not see Ferrer\u2019s name as the payee on the checks unless they accessed an audit trail.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper accepted Ferrer\u2019s guilty plea to theft of government property and set a sentencing date for September 18, 2025. Ferrer faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Judge Cooper will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.<\/p>\n
As part of her plea agreement, Ferrer agreed to pay $657,347.50 in restitution to the U.S. government. She also agreed to be liable for a forfeiture money judgment in that same amount.<\/p>\n
This case was investigated by the State Department\u2019s Office of Inspector General and Diplomatic Security Service. It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kondi Kleinman with assistance from Paralegal Specialist Sona Chaturvedi. Essential investigatory work was conducted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Orville of the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the District of South Carolina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Levita Almuete Ferrer, 64, of Montgomery Village, Maryland, pleaded guilty today to embezzling more than $650,000 from the U.S. State Department over a two-year period. The guilty plea was announced by U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr., Special Agent in Charge Benjamin Brockschmidt of the U.S. Department of State\u2019s Office of Inspector General, and Deputy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-daily-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7124,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7122\/revisions\/7124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}