The fire that gutted the off-road warehouse occurred in the early morning hours of March 28, 2019.
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) – Prosecutors say a 46-year-old bookkeeper for a Kearny Mesa-based company was found by a federal jury Monday on charges of intentionally setting a store on fire to cover up the disappearance of more than $700,000. announced that he had been found guilty.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California announced that Carrie Alice Hernandez, the financial director of Offroad Warehouse, was found guilty of malicious destruction of a building by arson, witness tampering, and making false statements. did. news release.
Off Road Warehouse, 7915 Balboa Ave., sold and installed auto parts and off-road gear. The owner of the business, also known as ORW, sold the business in late 2018, prosecutors said.
Officials said the buyer conducted an audit and found $744,621 was missing between January 2015 and March 2019, when Hernandez was the bookkeeper. .
The fire that gutted the off-road warehouse occurred in the early morning hours of March 28, 2019.
Prosecutors said surveillance video presented at trial showed an SUV with dark wheel rims driving near Hernandez’s Point Loma home. The video also showed her driving the same car to the arson scene and driving her home after the fire.
“The day after the fire, Mr. Hernandez sent misleading emails to ORW officials attempting to mislead them into believing that the wheel rims were bright instead of dark,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California said in a statement. “Specifically, after learning that law enforcement was searching for the black-rimmed SUV, she asked an employee who was replacing the distinctive rims on her car before the fire to replace the rims on her car at the time of the fire. It was bright, so they tried to convince her that the SUV had been found. It couldn’t be hers on the surveillance camera.”
Prosecutors said the investigation revealed that Hernandez lied about the SUV’s rims because surveillance video showed him driving around San Diego with dark rims instead of light rims.
“While we are extremely fortunate that no one was injured in this fire, it was a devastating loss to the company,” said U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath. “This defendant used arson, tampering with her witnesses, and deception to endanger the community, and the jury held her accountable.”
Sentencing for Hernandez is scheduled to be handed down on July 12 at 9:30 a.m.
