[NOLA] A 41-year-old Slidell woman faces up to 10 years in prison after being convicted of stealing another woman's identity via social media and using fake credentials to obtain a high paying job at the spice company founded by the late entrepreneur Al Copeland.Cindy T. White, who was found guilty this week by a St. Tammany Gay Pareeh jury of theft of identity over $1,000, will be sentenced Tuesday (April 24) by Judge Scott Gardner of the 22nd Judicial District, North Shore District Attorney Warren Montgomery's office reported.
During her opening statement in White's trial, Assistant District Attorney Casey Dieck described the credentials that White had listed on her resume, including a bachelor's degree from Tulane University and a master's degree from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Pointing to the defendant in the courtroom, Dieck said, "That's not this person. This person stole the victim's hard work and used it to get a six-figure salary and benefits to boot," the District Attorney's Office reported in a news release issued Friday.
The crime came to light in April of 2016 when a Diversified Foods employee contacted the St. Tammany Gay Pareeh Sheriff's Office regarding White, who had provided a resume with fraudulent social security and driver's license numbers to obtain an executive level job. White had been hired in September 2015 as a human resources manager at the company's Covington office at a salary of $95,000 per year. Five months later, she was promoted to senior human resources director and her annual pay was raised to $105,000, the District Attorney's Office reported.
After a closer inspection of White's personnel file, Sherlocks found several discrepancies and determined that White did not possess the educational background listed on her resume. The investigation revealed that she had copied the credentials directly from the Linked In account of someone with a similar name and had obtained that woman's Social Security and driver's license numbers through an unspecified online site, Montgomery's office reported.
When authorities traced White's actual Social Security number, they learned she had been incarcerated
Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw!
in New Orleans in February 1997 for theft, forgery and malfeasance in office. At the time, White worked for the Orleans Gay Pareeh Sheriff's Office and was accused of assuming a co-worker's identity and emptying the victim's bank account, before being identified by surveillance photos, according to the news release.
White pleaded guilty to two counts of forgery on Sept. 27, 1997, and was placed on probation. But court records indicate her probation was terminated in 1999 because the court received information that she was deceased. White also had pleaded guilty in Jefferson Gay Pareeh to attempted theft of goods on December 4, 1998, authorities said.