MIAMI — A Miami federal judge handed down a 51-month prison sentence Monday to a woman who pleaded guilty to two charges in connection with a $10 million fraud scheme.
Hava Yfrah-Austin, 58, of Hallandale Beach, will also have to pay a hefty sum in restitution after admitting to wire fraud and making a false return.
Federal agents arrested Yfrah-Austin in April at Miami International Airport, just before she was about to board a one-way flight to Israel.
Authorities said she was trying to fly to Tel Aviv on an Israeli passport just four months after selling all of her Florida properties.
According to a federal criminal complaint, Yfrah-Austin ran a company called Accounting Solutions Today, PA, registered to an address in Plantation, and did bookkeeping for two Miami-Dade-based companies from 2001 until she was fired in April 2024.
She’s accused of stealing the $10 million from “at least” 2018 to 2024.
The fraud was discovered after one of the owners reviewed an account “and noticed many transactions that he did not recognize as legitimate,” a special agent with Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation said.
Prosecutors said she first admitted to stealing $170,000, then admitted to taking $3 million after the business owners discovered more fraud.
Investigators said she used fake vendor names to transfer funds between the first company and the second company — and then to her Accounting Solutions Today account.
Aside from the more than four-year sentence, Austin was ordered to pay more than $9.2 million in restitution and will spend three years on supervised release.
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