A Tredyffrin Woman Pleaded Guilty To Embezzling From A Plymouth Meeting Company

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA — A Chester County woman will be spending up to two years behind bars after she admitted to embezzling close to $400,000 from the Montgomery County business where she worked as a financial controller.

Darby Ann Ibarguen, 46, of Tredyffrin Township, pleaded guilty late last month to felony counts of dealing in proceeds of unlawful activity, according to media reports and court records.

Records show that she received an 11-and-one-half to 23-month sentence at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility and that she will have to pay financial restitution for her thefts.

Back in December 2020, the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office and the Plymouth Township Police Department jointly announced criminal charges against Ibarguen for stealing more than $393,000 from Apparel Business Systems in Plymouth Meeting, where she had worked from early 2015 to 2020.

Plymouth Township Police at the time say they were tipped off to the theft after Apparel Business Systems discovered the embezzlement of company funds during an internal audit.

Ibarguen, who served as controller, was responsible for accounts payable and receivable, payroll processing and other duties until her firing in March 2020.

When they announced the charges in late 2020, prosecutors said that Ibarguen used various methods to defraud the company, including forging the signatures of two company executives in writing 21 checks to herself, totaling just over $19,000; making 92 payments totaling more than $74,000 on her personal credit cards using company funds; paying her Comcast cable bill 26 times totaling more than $5,000; and transferring company funds from the corporate bank account to her personal account 95 times with the transfers totaling close to $182,000, according to the District Attorney's Office.

Ibarguen was initially charged with a whole host of felony counts of dealing in proceeds of unlawful activity, forgery, theft by unlawful taking, and theft by deception.

Court records show that some of the other criminal charges were ultimately dropped in exchange for her guilty plea on some counts.

In addition to the jail term, Ibarguen was also ordered to pay restitution to her former employer, and Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Thomas M. DelRicci mandated that Ibarguen write a letter to the court every six months to advise on how much restitution has been made during that given period of time.

According to a report in the Mercury newspaper of Pottstown, company representatives had written a victim impact letter to the court prior to sentencing, saying that the defendant's fraud and deception was "shocking and disappointing," since the woman was "very well liked by our staff."

"We have all questioned our abilities to be good judges of character and none are as trusting as we were prior to this," the company wrote in the letter, according to the Mercury. "We have all felt very betrayed."