Woman charged with mass theft from employer.
CHAMBERSBURG - A Scotland woman's love of Bruce Springsteen led to her second round of mass theft charges in the past two years.
Catherine Amelie Wilmer, 54, was charged Oct. 17 with felony theft and receiving stolen property in connection with her former job in the office of Dr. David Hartzok of Chambersburg Eye Associates, according to court documents.
Wilmer was previously charged with forgery, theft and identity theft in 2015.
In the 2015 case, Wilmer is accused of stealing more than $500,000 from her boss. Wilmer entered a plea in the case, but in August withdrew the plea.
The new charges allege that while Wilmer was working for Hartzok, she stole inventory and attempted to resell it.
After Wilmer was fired from Hartzok's office, an eyeglass sales representative told Hartzok that his product was not being displayed at the office. Hartzok found that a lot of product ordered was not there, and confirmed that the inventory was not sold but was missing.
Hartzok began looking on eBay to see if the missing frames were being resold, and found that there were "professional" people selling frames, he told police.
Hartzok saw a username "stairway_to_asbury_park" that he thought didn't look like a professional user. He noticed that the user sold Bruce Springsteen and Orioles merchandise, and he knew Wilmer was a big fan of both.
He also saw that the user sold a lot of glasses frames, including ones that were the same brand he was missing. The frames were being sold from Ellicott City, Maryland, which is where Wilmer is from and where she still has family, according to court documents.
Hartzok reportedly confronted Wilmer about the account on August 31, 2016, and she denied knowing about them. Approximately one hour after that meeting, 29 eBay posts for glasses frames were "ended," and the use of the stairway_to_asbury_park account became "unregistered."
Hartzok told police that from what he could tell, he was missing 455 frames, each worth approximately $100, making his total loss an estimated $45,000.
Hartzok told police that in August 2014, Wilmer was in charge of opening the office at 7:30 a.m., and that she was the only one in the office until 8 a.m. He believed it was during that half hour that she could have stolen the frames.
A Pennsylvania State Police trooper reviewed the pictures of the for-sale frames, seeing that one had a different background than the others. Hartzok told the trooper that he believed the background was from a table in his office. The trooper went to Hartzog's office and took pictures of that table.
A warrant was executed on the eBay account stairway_to_asbury_park, and investigators found that the account was registered to Wilmer. She used a PO Box address in Scotland and a physical address for Chambersburg Eye Associates for the account. The username had been registered to her since June 7, 2002.
Investigators found that Wilmer started selling glasses frames August 17, 2014. She had sold or listed more than 2,000 glasses frames from August 17, 2014 until August 29, 2016.
Wilmer was taken into custody on October 18, and bail was set at $25,000. Wilmer posted her bail later that day by bond.
Wilmer was scheduled for a hearing on the prior charges October 27, but did not show up because she was the hospital, according to court documents. A new hearing date has not been set for those charges.
A preliminary hearing on the new theft charges is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 1.
