Ex-Bridgeport furniture store accountant pleads guilty to using company money on Phillies tickets, vacations

A New Jersey woman pleaded guilty in Montgomery County this week to stealing from a family-run furniture story and using the embezzled money to fund vacations, gamble on sports, and pay for the legal defense for one of her sons.

Linda Mansi, 54, of Tuckerton, Ocean County, entered the plea Monday to theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception and forgery for stealing from Arnold’s Furniture and Sunline Supply Company in Bridgeport. But the amount she stole while working as the store’s accountant and vice president of finance and human resources remains under dispute.

Prosecutors, led by Assistant District Attorney Gwendolyn Kull, say Mansi embezzled $1.2 million over the course of seven years. But Mansi’s attorney, Stephen J. Fleury Jr., said in court that she admitted to taking about $102,000, and plans to contest the amount prosecutors allege she stole.

Fleury did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Mansi is scheduled to be sentenced in October. The maximum prison time she faces is 11 ½ to 23 months, as part of a negotiation with prosecutors.

Mansi’s theft was discovered in 2023, when an executive assistant to Arnold’s owner reviewed a bank statement from a business account the company had created at Mansi’s suggestion years earlier, according to the affidavit of probable cause for her arrest.

Mansi had sole control and oversight of this account, a decision that, prosecutors say, allowed her to treat it as if it were her own, abusing it for a variety of personal expenses.

“The defendant took this trust and lack of oversight by company owners and stole hard-earned company money in order to facilitate living a more lavish lifestyle for herself and her family members,” the affidavit said.

When the owners confronted Mansi about the unauthorized purchases, she apologized, prosecutors said. She was fired and arrested months later.

Among her purchases were $3,000 spent on expenses related to the New Jersey prison system on behalf of her son, who is incarcerated in Camden County on an assault case, the affidavit said. She also paid more than $103,000 to the mother of one of his children.

Mansi used hundreds of thousands of dollars in company money on her family, including buying $11,000 worth of tickets to concerts and Phillies games, the affidavit said. She even used it to pay for her younger son’s 21st birthday party trip to Miami, covering his airfare, hotel and tickets to a rap concert.

She also, at one point, inflated her own salary at Arnold’s by $19,000, and forged W-2 forms to give her older son, a warehouse worker at the time, a higher salary, according to prosecutors.