Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Stole $16 Million - The Sandy Jenkins story

Episode Date: June 7, 2025

Sandy Jenkins, a longtime accountant at Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas, orchestrated one of the most audacious embezzlement schemes in U.S. history. Between 2004 and 2013, Jenkins exploited his position to siphon nearly $17 million from the bakery by manipulating the company's accounting system. He issued fraudulent checks to pay personal expenses, then altered records to conceal the thefts. The ill-gotten funds financed an extravagant lifestyle.

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And he thinks, yeah, that's not enough. But instead of asking for a raise like a normal human being, he decides he's gonna steal some money from them. And one day in 2004, he starts doing it. He starts by taking a small amount, just some petty cash lying around. And so he takes this cash and no one realizes it's gone. And Sandy's like, sweet, let's do it again! And so he keeps doing it.

Then he like immediately goes and buys himself a gold Lexus, so you know his old ass can flex. Because apparently when you're stealing money, you gotta flex, because I guess those are the rules. And when his wife is like, where'd you get all the money for this car? Sandy tells her that one of his accounting clients gave it to him as a gift, and I guess she just, like, believes him.

And so now his petty cash theft scheme is working. No one has noticed, any money is missing, his wife believes his story for some reason, and that is when Sandy is like, I wonder if I could take even more. And so being the Bakery's accountant, he comes up with his whole elaborate scheme to use the Bakery's checkwriting software to embezzle money from them and pay it to himself. And he starts off by basically writing himself a $20,000 check and funneling it into his own account.

And again, it works. And he's able to do his accounting abracadabra and cover his tracks and no one at the bakery knows this money is missing. Because here's the thing about this bakery. This bakery looks like a small town place, but these guys actually sell a lot of fruitcakes, like tens of millions of dollars worth a year. And so they're not going to notice they're $20,000 short. And so keeping that in mind, he decides, hell yeah, let's do it again. And over time, he steals again and again and again.

He keeps writing checks to his own account, until he siphoned off a ton of money from this little establishment. And of course, now that he's got all this free money, he's got to go spend it on some dumb shit. Because like I said, when you steal money, you got to flex. That's the rule. And so he goes on these shopping sprees and he buys himself designer clothes. he remodels his whole kitchen with granite everything.

He builds this big ass wine cellar at his house and he fills it up with expensive wines. He buys himself a ton of Rolexes because I guess he really likes watches. Now at this point, his gullible-ass wife is like, is all this money going to get us in trouble? And Sandy's like, yeah, if anyone asks, I'll just say it's coming from my accounting clients. And so wife must know Sandy's story isn't adding up. But for whatever reason, I guess she doesn't press him as hard as. she should. And maybe, maybe that's because he starts buying her a bunch of shit too. Like he buys her

diamonds and pearls and fur coats and designer purses and a bunch of rings. He even tells her it's okay to quit her job because they have enough money now. And so she quits her job, which at this point she's got to know he's stealing. I mean, one of his accounting clients is giving him all this money as a gift. Come on, how naive can you be? Anyway, soon enough, Sandy has embezzled enough money that he buys them a whole ass vacation home. So now this guy has multiple houses. And as the years go by, his theft gets more and more obvious because he's taking larger sums of money. And of course he spends all that too. He like starts flying on private jets. Here's a picture of him and his wife on a private jet. Here's another picture of them on a private jet. And here they

are vacationing in Napa Valley. And like he and his wife are driving brand new $100,000 car. every couple of months. Like one month it's a Mercedes, then it's a Bentley, then it's a Porsche. And of course, people around Sandy, they aren't stupid because Sandy and his wife are making it so obvious. You can't just have a $50,000 a year job and fly around on private jets all the time. And so people around them see him wearing all these new Rolexes, driving these new cars, taking trips to Napa Valley. And they're like, yo, doesn't this guy make 50 grand a year? And so they're all wondering if he like won the lottery or something. But see, Sandy, he's a smart guy, or at least he thinks he is.

He's got this covered. He always has some bullshit story ready. Like he tells them that he makes a bunch of money on the side flipping cars or that he inherited the money from a relative or that it's actually his cousin's private jet or whatever. And I guess people believe him or at least they don't seem to suspect him of stealing. And all this is great for Sandy because for the first time in his life, he's actually rich. From this Texas bakery, he's stolen more than $16 million. Oh, and to make it worse, the bakery is no longer profitable.

They're now losing money every year, no matter how many fruitcakes they sell, they're not profitable because Sandy is stealing so much money from them at a time. But Sandy, he don't give a damn, he's living big, he's still spending, he buys 98 watches, he buys gold bars, like just for the hell of it. I don't think this guy's ever going to get caught. Until. Of course this guy's going to get caught. Come on.

And so years go by, and it's now 2011, and a woman starts working at the bakery, her name's Symmetric. And Symmetric is an accounting assistant. And so she starts working on these accounts, looking over everything, and she notices some numbers aren't quite adding up. And after about two years, it's now 2013,

and she sees a big accounting issue, one that couldn't possibly be an accident, because it's money being funneled into an outside bank account. And so she takes this to Sandy because he's her superior, and of course Sandy makes up some nonsense excuse like, oh, that's because of gosh, but Symmetric doesn't buy it. So she starts investigating on her own, and she eventually takes all her findings to her boss. And immediately, boom, the bakery finally fires Sandy. So now what's he going to do? Well, he understands that he's screwed.

I mean, the bakery knows that he's been stealing from them for the past nine years. And so they're definitely going to report him to the police. And this is such a huge amount of money that the FBI is then probably going to get involved. And this scares the hell out of him. And so he decides to stash all his loot so the police can't seize it. And he gathers up all his millions of dollars in jewelry and watches and gold bars and stuff that he bought with the stolen money and he shoves it into grocery bags. Then he drives out of town over to his daughter's house and he drops the stuff off there.

Then he and his wife disappear for a while. I actually have no idea where they go during this time. But a few weeks later, boom, the FBI goes and raids his house looking for him and any other evidence they can find. This is an actual photo of the raid. And once Sandy realizes the FBI is on to him, he decides to go back to his daughter's house and take his stash of watches and gold bars and shit and throw a bunch of it into the nearby lake.

So there's like half a million dollars of luxury goods chilling at the bottom of this lake. Regardless, local police eventually find it. And the FBI finds Sandy, wherever the hell he's been hiding, and bam, they arrest him. And I don't have a mugshot, but here's a picture of him in real life. And of course, after all this, his wife tries to play it off, like, I had no idea he was stealing.

This is news to me. Sure you didn't, lady. And anyway, Sandy gets sentenced to 10 years in prison while his wife gets sentenced to five years probation.