Man embezzled millions from Lake Norman businesses. Then he bought a Mercedes and Audi.
For seven years, Scott Weiss lived a life of luxury, according to federal prosecutors. He lived in a high-end apartment in uptown Charlotte, drove a Mercedes, and shopped at designer stores like Louis Vuitton and Tiffany.
But he was doing it with hundreds of thousands he embezzled from two small Mooresville businesses, a U.S. Department of Justice press release said. He also used the money on “luxury” vacations, including stays at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, prosecutors said.
Weiss, 50, was sentenced to 40 months in prison and ordered to pay over $1.6 million in restitution in federal court Monday. He pleaded guilty in 2023.
He will be given three years of supervised probation after he’s released from prison.
Bookkeeping for two small businesses
Weiss started embezzling from the second company while already defrauding the first one, according to prosecutors.
Between 2016 and 2022 he made over 100 fraudulent transfers from the companies’ bank accounts to his own by creating fake entries in their books and records as payments to existing vendors.
He disguised the transfers to his bank accounts as payments for software development, or advertising and marketing expenses, the press release said.
