Ex-office manager sentenced to prison, pay restitution in embezzlement case

WILMINGTON, NC (WECT) - Guy Williams, a former office administrator with Wilmington Plastic Surgery, was sentenced to prison Wednesday and ordered to pay restitution after pleading guilty to embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the medical practice.

Williams was sentenced to 3-4 years in prison, 60 months of probation, and ordered to pay $69,000 in restitution as well as $1,000 in court costs.

Three employees of Wilmington Plastic Surgery took the stand Wednesday to let the court and Williams know how much damage he caused. Dr. Jeff Church said Williams started stealing before he was even hired.

Williams got into a car accident shortly before he joined the practice, and once he was hired, charged his rental car to the company credit card, as well as a $4,000 down payment on his new car. Church said the spending sky-rocketed from there.

Williams spent more than half a million dollars on first class plane tickets to Paris for he and his wife, traffic tickets, delinquent taxes, his daughter's sweet sixteen party, renovations to his home, and more.

Church said his firm has endured a lot of pain from William's betrayal and his practice is ready for the closure.

"We're doctors, we want to take care of people, and the time and the effort we had to put into this really made double duty for us to do that, but we didn't compromise our patient care and we took care of this," Church said.

Williams started managing the plastic surgery office in 2007 before being fired in 2014, and later arrested.

Warrants say Williams stole nearly $400,000 and forged a check for $200,000 with a doctor's name.

Williams faced a judge last year for two counts of embezzling more than or equal to $100,000, two counts of embezzlement, and one count of forgery of endorsement.

According to court officials, he pleaded guilty to 16 counts of embezzlement and one count of forgery of endorsement earlier this month as part of a negotiated plea.

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