St. Croix Woman Sentenced to 16 Months in Federal Prison for $372K Embezzlement Scheme

ST. CROIX — Nicole Morales, a 48-year-old resident of St. Croix and native of California, has been sentenced to 16 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to a scheme that defrauded her employer of $372,496.34 over a period of more than three years. The sentence was handed down by District Judge Wilma A. Lewis on Friday following Morales’s guilty plea in November 2024 to three counts of wire fraud. In addition to her prison sentence, Judge Lewis ordered Morales to pay full restitution in the amount of $372,496.34, along with a $300 special assessment. According to court records, Morales was hired in November 2015 by the St. Croix-based law firm Nichols, Newman, Logan, Grey, and Lockwood, P.C. as an office manager. Her responsibilities included processing payroll through Banco Popular and managing the firm’s QuickBooks accounting software. Just a month into her employment, in December 2015, Morales began fraudulently inflating her payroll in QuickBooks. She then wired unauthor...