Christina Klauda

Introduction

Christina Klauda, a 53-year-old woman from Riddle, Oregon, has pleaded guilty to federal charges for a years-long embezzlement scheme that drained her employer, a small-town lumber company, of more than $1 million while she ran its books. Klauda admitted to one count of bank fraud and two counts of making and subscribing false federal income tax returns, according to the announcement by U.S. Attorney Scott E. Bradford of the District of Oregon. The government estimates Tower Timber Services, Inc. — the Riddle-based lumber company where Klauda served as office manager and bookkeeper from 2014 — lost more than $1.08 million to her scheme, while Klauda herself acknowledges losses of at least $944,371.97. She has also agreed to pay restitution estimated between roughly $972,000 and $1.1 million.

Background Information

Klauda’s position gave her every key to the company’s money. As office manager and bookkeeper for Tower Timber Services beginning in 2014, she was responsible for payroll, accounts payable, invoicing, employee dispatch, and preparation of employee tax forms — the whole administrative spine of a working timber operation in a town of a few hundred people. That control over the company’s financial systems is what she admitted using to steal, systematically, from 2014 through 2023: nearly a decade of take-home pay inflated far beyond what the job paid, executed through the payroll and accounting software only she was minding. The scheme’s duration is the point — this was not a single desperate act but a career-length embezzlement that survived multiple budget cycles, tax seasons, and audits that never happened.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Pleaded guilty; sentencing pending. Klauda admitted a decade-long embezzlement that cost her employer more than $1 million, pleading guilty to bank fraud and two counts of false tax returns.

The plea agreement lays out the scheme’s mechanics in three layers. First, Klauda inflated her own pay: she began by increasing her hourly and overtime rates and overstating her work hours in the company’s payroll system. Second, she built a phantom employee: beginning in 2018, she created a second employee profile in the company’s accounting software and arranged to receive duplicate payroll payments — one payment through direct deposit and a second through paper checks that she concealed by deleting records of the transactions from the accounting software, so the company’s books never showed the ghost on its payroll. Third, she raided the owner’s signature: Klauda admitted using the company owner’s signature stamp without authorization to issue additional checks to herself and her personal creditors, disguising the payments as loans, reimbursements, or draws, removing the transactions from company records, and failing to report the income to the Internal Revenue Service.

The tax counts document the concealment’s endpoint. Klauda filed false federal income tax returns for tax years 2018 and 2019 by failing to report the income she had stolen — approximately $38,140 in unreported income in 2018 and $74,144 in 2019 — causing a total tax loss of $27,985. The charge structure maps the scheme’s scale: the bank fraud count carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison, a $1 million fine, and five years of supervised release, while each tax fraud count carries up to three years, a $100,000 fine, and one year of supervised release. Sentencing has not yet been scheduled, and the agreed restitution — estimated between $972,356.97 and $1,111,771.56, covering losses to both Tower Timber and the IRS — will be fixed at or after it.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case was investigated by IRS Criminal Investigation, whose agents reconstructed a decade of doctored payroll runs, deleted transactions, and stamp-authorized checks into the admissions Klauda made in the plea. Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine A. Rykken is prosecuting the case. For Tower Timber — a lumber company that trusted one employee with its books for nine years — the consequences are already written into the restitution agreement: a seven-figure hole in a small business’s finances, and the discovery that the employee tax forms it filed were prepared by the person stealing from it. Klauda’s plea carries no public statement from her or counsel; the admissions in the agreement are the record.

Current Status

Klauda has pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing on one count of bank fraud and two counts of making and subscribing false federal income tax returns, with the bank fraud count exposing her to up to 30 years and the tax counts to six years combined at maximum. The restitution obligation — between roughly $972,357 and $1,111,772 — is agreed in principle, with the final figure to be set by the court. Until sentencing, the losses remain estimates; after it, they become a judgment she owes. The IRS-CI investigation closed with the plea rather than a trial, converting its decade-long reconstruction of the company’s books directly into admissions.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Klauda’s decade as Tower Timber’s office manager and bookkeeper ended as the thing the plea documents: a nine-year theft from the employer whose payroll, invoices, and tax forms she controlled. The restitution judgment approaching seven figures will follow her past any sentence the court imposes — it is debt attached to a 53-year-old’s remaining earning years, enforced for as long as the government collects it. The felony admissions — bank fraud and false tax returns — foreclose the bookkeeping and office-management career the scheme was built inside, since the conviction record documents exactly how those skills were used at the last job that trusted her with them. The case is the small-business version of the embezzlement pattern: no auditor caught it, no bank flagged it, and it took IRS Criminal Investigation to prove that the woman preparing the company’s employee tax forms had been paying herself from two payrolls and the owner’s signature stamp since 2014.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Oregon, “Former Oregon Lumber Company Bookkeeper Pleads Guilty to Embezzling Nearly $1 Million From Employer Over Decade-Long Scheme,” November 4, 2026. source