After sentencing Atlanta lawyer Nathan Hardwick IV to 15 years in prison on Monday for embezzlement, a federal judge the next day sentenced his co-conspirator, Asha Maurya, to seven years followed by three years on supervised release.

That was a sharp increase from the 33 months indicated by the sentencing guidelines.

Judge Eleanor Ross of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia said Tuesday it was uncommon for her to sentence above the guidelines, but she did so because of Maurya's “egregious conduct,” the number of people she harmed and her repeated thefts.

“I find this provides sufficient punishment and deterrence—especially deterrence,” the judge said at the sentencing hearing Tuesday.

Maurya was the controller for Hardwick's now-defunct firm, Morris Hardwick Schneider. She helped Hardwick steal millions of dollars from the firm by facilitating wire transfers from its operating and escrow accounts to pay his bills for casinos, private jets, women and other expenses.

Once the largest residential real estate closing firm in the Southeast, Morris Hardwick Schneider filed for bankruptcy less than a year after the discovery in mid-2014 that more than $30 million was missing from its escrow accounts.

The discovery of a bank statement that Maurya admitted to altering brought the escrow account shortfalls to light.

Maurya has been cooperating with the government since she pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in 2015 and admitted embezzling $900,000 for herself.

Despite Maurya's assistance, the government had asked for 63 months imprisonment, calling her “a career fraudster who embezzled from numerous employers before and after the charged conspiracy.” The charged conspiracy period was from 2011 through mid-2014.

While it was Hardwick who directed Maurya to wire millions of dollars from the firm's accounts to casinos, private jet companies and his personal holding company, Divot, for his benefit, Maurya was as culpable in the destruction of the firm and the damage it caused to its 800 employees and others, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Lynsey Barron on Tuesday.

“If she did not help drive the firm $30 million into the hole and then into bankruptcy, the firm would still be a going concern,” the prosecutor said.

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Maurya Appears

Maurya took full responsibility for her crimes in a statement to the judge. “I betrayed everyone. I outright broke the law,” she said.

“I have no words to diminish the harm and pain I caused to the 800 partners, staff and employees, [owners] Mark and Gerard Wittstadt, Art Morris and [title-insurer] Fidelity,” Maurya said.

Maurya had submitted eight letters to the judge from family, friends, her current employer and a therapist before the hearing, asking for clemency.

Her sister-in-law and the therapist wrote that Maurya had experienced horrific physical and emotional abuse from her father and her brother while growing up, which contributed to her need to keep her employers happy and comply with their demands.

“I understand incarceration. I've been living in a prison since my childhood,” Maurya told the judge.

Ross asked Maurya how many employers she'd stolen from, and Maurya said four.

“I've never seen anything like it,” the judge said, calling the thefts a pattern. “I'm not sure how it relates to the abuse you suffered earlier in life, but I take note of the abuse,” Ross added.

“Ms. Maurya is not beyond redemption,” said her lawyer, Jess Johnson of Pate & Johnson.

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'Shifting Story'

“Ms. Maurya presented an unusual problem,” Barron, the prosecutor, said. The former Morris Hardwick Schneider controller dutifully met with the government each of the 11 times they asked her—but “her story kept shifting,” the prosecutor said.

Maurya was expected to be the government's star witness at Hardwick's three-week trial last fall, but Barron told the judge the prosecutors found out two weeks before it started that she'd “embezzled from every single employer” except her current one.

“So we could not put her on at trial,” Barron said. “But she was critical to help get a handle on the firm's finances.”

Similarly, Barron said, Maurya disclosed neither to Hardwick's co-owners in the law firm, Mark and Gerard Wittstadt, nor to title-insurer Fidelity National Finance, which stepped in and paid $29.5 million to plug the escrow hole, that she'd stolen $900,000 herself. Instead, a former prosecutor on the case, David Chaiken, now a partner at Troutman Sanders, discovered her theft.

At the trial, the judge allowed Hardwick's defense team, led by Ed Garland of Garland, Samuel & Loeb, to call two of Maurya's former employers to testify. That included Tony Thrash, CEO of Pro Care Emergency Services, an ambulance company where she worked after her ouster from Morris Hardwick Schneider.

Thrash alleged in his testimony that Maurya wrongly charged $15,000 on a corporate credit card when she worked as his company's controller in 2014. After three months, he fired her for falsifying financial statements to inflate the company's revenue—and called the FBI.

At that point, Maurya was already cooperating with the FBI in the Hardwick case.

Hardwick's lawyers were unable to convince the jury that Maurya, not Hardwick, was the culprit for the millions embezzled from the firm. The jurors unanimously convicted Hardwick on 21 counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of making false statements to banks.

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Shared Culpability

Hardwick's ex-partners in the law firm agreed with the government that Maurya shared culpability with Hardwick. “But for her actions, this catastrophe would not have happened,” said Mark Wittstadt.

Wittstadt said he told Maurya when Hardwick made her the controller of the law firm's closing operation that “her duty was to the firm, not to any one individual,” and if she saw anything amiss, she should come to him or his brother, Gerard Wittstadt.

“She decided instead that, if Nat Hardwick was going to steal, then she was, too,” he said.

In the early days of the crisis, after the escrow shortfalls came to light, Wittstadt said, he and retired partner Art Morris asked Maurya how much money was missing. She told them “two or three million,” he said, when the shortfall was actually more than $30 million.

If they had known the enormity of the shortfall then, in late July 2014, Wittstadt said, they would have gone to Fidelity immediately for help (which they did two weeks later in exchange for Fidelity's eventual ownership of the firm's title company). Instead, they allowed Hardwick to borrow $5 million from his client, golf pro Dusty Johnson, and local businessman Jim Pritchard to replenish the escrow accounts.

Hardwick made Morris Hardwick Schneider the guarantor for the loans without the Wittstadts' permission, they have said, and, after his forced exit in August 2014, the firm refused to pay them.

That prompted well-publicized suits from Johnson and Pritchard that Wittstadt said did him serious and unfounded reputational damage.

Maurya remains free on bond until her restitution hearing, which is set for May 9, the same day as Hardwick's.

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