‘This has been devastating’: Business owner victimized by massive Chubbuck embezzlement scheme speaks out

CHUBBUCK — For years, Ric Boyce struggled with the apparent financial woes of his company, Mental Health Specialists. With the business not churning any profit, Boyce found himself homeless and couch surfing. Eventually, one of his employees put money in his business account and called it a loan to keep the business solvent.

That employee, the same one who consoled him on several occasions, he later discovered, had stolen several hundred thousand dollars from him and his company.

Candace Page Raschke, 53, pleaded guilty to tax evasion and embezzlement after reaching a plea deal with the Bannock County Prosecutor’s Office. In exchange for the guilty pleas, felonies for grand larceny, two counts of perjury, two counts of grand theft, and an additional count of tax evasion were dismissed.

As punishment for the crime, she was sent on a rider by District Judge Roberts Naftz.

RELATED | Inkom woman gets rider for tax evasion, embezzling over $100K

Also part of that agreement, Raschke was ordered to pay $12,000 in restitution to Boyce. But Boyce said he is left wondering about the rest of the approximate $400,000 his “duplicitous” former employee took — and the several million he has paid catching the business up since.

“She’s gotten away with murder on this,” he told EastIdahoNews.com. “It’s cost me $3 million to keep this place in business.”

Boyce said he was “blown away” by the light penalty, calling the sentence “a smack in the face” from the legal system.

Raschke began working for Mental Health Specialists in 2010, shortly after the business launched.

Her hire date, Boyce said, is important. It means the company was never able to establish a clear baseline of income to which Boyce could later compare.

Within six months, according to Boyce’s extensive research into the company’s financial records, Raschke began stealing money. It started small, he said, with personal payments made from company accounts.

But the theft grew to include massive purchases — including a $2,800 car repair and a $1,400 digital camera, made in a span of two weeks.

Raschke also took medical coverage for her entire family from the company and, Boyce added, doubled her salary.

She did not double her base pay, he said. That would have been easy to spot. Instead, she paid herself her normal salary. She just gave herself paychecks weekly — rather than biweekly, like all her coworkers.

Boyce eventually discovered and reported the crimes in 2017. By then, though, Raschke had taken what a forensic accountant believes to be around $385,000 from the company, Boyce told EastIdahoNews.com. And that is just the total that can be traced.

In the six years since he discovered the embezzlement scheme he has connected her to a medical billing company, and suspects she could have been skimming significantly more money directly from his customers. However, doing what he believed she did would have left no evidence he could track.

After she was fired, Boyce had the difficult task of firing Raschke’s daughter, who was also employed by the company. When he told the daughter that she was being fired for the sins of her mother, Boyce said she responded, “She’s done it again, hasn’t she?”

Through the process of investigating, turning evidence over to police, and speaking with numerous attorneys, Boyce said Raschke had been linked to multiple other similar schemes under other names.

The victims of one such scheme, the owners of Western Wats Center Inc., sent a letter to the judge before the sentencing hearing.

The letter, obtained by EastIdahoNews.com, states that Raschke — or as the victim knew her, Candace McKamey — “set up and executed multi-year sophisticated systems to embezzle and/or steal hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

She was charged with five felony counts of forgery and two counts of grand theft by embezzlement in that 2005 case, court documents show. After reaching a plea agreement, she was sentenced to probation with a four-to-eight-year prison sentence suspended for one count of each felony by District Judge Stephen Dunn in that case.

“These are long-term confidence crimes,” Boyce said. “This is a highly lucrative career she’s got for herself.”

During the sentencing hearing, prosecuting attorney David McNeill spoke of a 2001 case in which Raschke’s then-husband settled an embezzlement case in civil court. Though it was her husband who was charged, McNeill argued Raschke was well aware of the crimes.

“They were generating tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of extra dollars,” he said. “She was benefitting by furnishings, elective plastic surgery and other types of benefits.”

McNeill claimed Raschke had created a story about using the company card to repay herself for the $13,000 loan she had given Boyce, a loan to which Boyce said he was making weekly agreed-upon payments.

Speaking through tears at the sentencing hearing, Raschke called the story she had offered “simply an excuse” for the things she had done.

McNeill argued in favor of a prison sentence, saying Raschke was not a good candidate for probation.

“Probation didn’t work (in the past). … Rehabilitation didn’t work,” he said. “This is something that has affected the entire community. Mental Health Specialists is an extremely important, invaluable asset to our community, and its livelihood was jeopardized by this longterm embezzlement.”

Boyce agreed with the sentiment, saying that his company “barely limped through” the scheme. He added that despite his already having paid more than $3 million toward bills missed due to the crimes, he said the business still, seven years later, has recovering to do.

“But we’re doing a heck of a lot better than we were. … we’re still recovering,” he said.

Raschkes’s defense attorney, Anthony Budge, requested she be allowed to surrender on a set date, so she would be able to get her affairs in order. Since the arrest, she had been hired at Bingham Memorial Hospital in Blackfoot.

“That won’t happen,” Naftz responded. “She’ll be taken into custody today.”

The rider, he added, was a stiff penalty for the “criminal mind” she has shown to have. Naftz cautioned Raschke to take the treatment programs assigned to her in the prison seriously, as he will have the choice to enforce her full underlying prison sentence upon completion.

A rider program is where a judge sends a person to prison for up to a year to undergo different treatment programs. When the inmate has completed the program, the judge can then decide to send them back to prison for their sentence or release them on probation.

Raschke’s underlying prison sentence was five to 10 years.

Though Raschke has been removed from his company, Boyce said her impact on it will be felt for years.

Boyce said he spent every free minute of his time for roughly six months investigating his own books to find all the money that had been taken. He was homeless, sleeping on friends’ couches, and lay awake most nights trying to figure out how to keep his staff employed.

“We were struggling to pay people the kind of salaries they were deserving because she was taking everything,” Boyce said. “If it was there, she’d take it. If there was 20 bucks left over in the bank account, she would take it.”

Asked if he had considered filing a civil suit, Boyce said without hesitation:

“I didn’t have the money because she had stolen so much.”

Boyce said it will always be difficult to trust people. He finds himself micromanaging people he knows don’t need to be micromanaged — because he’s lost all trust.

“This has been devastating,” he said. “And it will be devastating for the next 10 to 20 years.”

EastIdahoNews.com comment boards are a place for open, honest, and civil communication between readers regarding the news of the day and issues facing our communities. We encourage commenters to stay on topic, use positive and constructive language, and be empathetic to the feelings of other commenters. THINK BEFORE YOU POST. Click here for more details on our commenting rules.