Former Dunbar Township woman accused of bilking $200,000 from employer
A former Dunbar Township woman who pleaded guilty two years ago to bilking more than $2.6 million from a Texas company was indicted Tuesday in a different case accusing her of stealing money from a national restaurant with locations across the area.
A federal grand jury in Pittsburgh indicted Deane Sue Petzel on two felony counts of wire fraud, accusing her of stealing more than $200,000 while she worked as area director for an unnamed bakery and café chain in Western Pennsylvania.
Federal investigators said Petzel created a fictitious company called Buzzz Services that she used to charge her employer for various maintenance and other work at the restaurants, with the invoice payments going to a bank account she set up. Petzel allegedly performed the scheme from January 2020 until June 2021 and stole more than $200,000 through the process, according to federal court documents.
The company is not named in court documents, but was identified by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as Panera Bread.
Petzel previously worked as a recruiter for Moran’s Foods, which later was acquired by Ampex, from 1998 until 2019. From 2011 until the end of her time there, she was accused of submitting expense statements in which she was supposedly placing help wanted ads on online job boards and charging the company invoices for purchases she never made using her personal credit card.
The company is based in Richardson, Texas, and operates 400 Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut locations in 13 states. During her tenure, Petzel was permitted to work remotely from her home near Connellsville.
She pleaded guilty in the U.S. District of Northern Texas to mail fraud and was sentenced in June 2021 to serve 45 months in federal prison and pay $2.1 million restitution to Ampex and $500,000 to Great American Insurance Co. She was serving her sentence when the new indictment was handed down.