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Former escrow officer charged in costly scheme
Michele Bocci has paid her boss back, but still faces four years in prison
By Jeff Kearns
A former employee at an American Title Company office in Cupertino was arrested at work on Jan. 13 by investigators from the Santa Clara County District Attorney's office on charges that she dipped into escrow accounts and made other fraudulent transactions.
Michele Ray Bocci, 30, has been charged with three counts of grand theft and one count of forgery. She is set to enter a plea in Superior Court Feb. 7. If convicted, she faces up to four years and four months in state prison, said Deputy District Attorney Joe Reader of the office's real estate fraud unit. Bocci was released on $200,000 bail.
While working at American Title, Bocci allegedly transferred a total of $11,330 out of inactive escrow accounts and into new accounts that she set up for herself, to help cover payments she was struggling to make on her own home mortgage.
The charges were brought to authorities when employees at American Title complained to the Sheriff's Department.
Bocci made restitution for the full $11,330 to the title company Jan. 20.
Reader said investigators still are going through records, and although the money Bocci allegedly transferred out of some accounts has been replaced, some of the account holders still haven't been told they were victimized.
Wayne Diaz, president of Irvine-based American Title, said Bocci worked as an escrow officer at the company's office at 19200 Stevens Creek Boulevard. She left the company about a year ago.
Bocci, who she lives in Morgan Hill, also faces charges that she and her husband, James Bocci, 37, bilked a Morgan Hill couple by forging a deed of trust when she purchased the other couple's home there in 1993. James Bocci has not been arrested or charged in the case. Michele Bocci allegedly forged the deed, which was never recorded with the county, while she worked at a Morgan Hill title company before she began working in Cupertino in 1994.
The payments on that home, Reader said, are what Bocci was trying to cover by using funds from the other escrow accounts.
The third theft charge resulted from Bocci's dealings at Financial Title Company in Milpitas, where she was working when she was arrested.
Investigators also are combing through files and accounting records trying to trace when what funds were transferred where--a task made more difficult the fact that about six of the escrow files have disappeared.
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Cupertino, California Since 1947
