Former accountant of Cedar Rapids construction company indicted on more charges

CEDAR RAPIDS - A former accountant with a Cedar Rapids construction company previously charged with embezzling over $300,000 was indicted Tuesday and now faces eight additional charges in federal court.

Teresa Lynn Meeks, 59, was indicted on seven counts of wire fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft. She is accused of embezzling $350,000 from Primus Construction, 401 Eighth Ave. SE, and its other companies, PCI Steel and Primus Industrial. She had access to the companies' accounts and was authorized to write checks to cover business expenses. From September 2009 through Nov. 5, 2014 she wrote checks to herself or RJM, a business owned by Meeks and her husband, the indictment shows.

Meeks will be arraigned on the additional charges Thursday in U.S. District Court. She was previously released with special conditions when she was initially charged last month.

The indictment shows Meeks signed her name on the checks and also signed the checks using the signature of Bart Woods, an owner of Primus authorized to sign checks on the accounts, on Oct. 14 and Oct. 20, 2014. Meeks worked with the companies for 16 years, court documents show.

Woods reported the suspected theft to authorities in November 2014 after an employee with Hills Bank called him about suspicious checks being deposited into Meeks' account, court documents show. The checks from Primus were unusual because they were made payable to Meeks and signed and endorsed by her.

Woods started an internal audit and found Meeks had written 'hundreds” of checks from various business accounts to herself, according to court documents. In reviewing the ledgers, Woods found that Meeks 'disguised” the checks she wrote to herself in the ledger, making them payable to various Primus vendors.

Court documents filed last month showed Meeks has repaid Woods $12,891 since the fraud was discovered. She also sent a text and email to Woods apologizing to him and saying she would try to repay him.