Victims Detail Financial Woes Caused by Lowlife CPA

By her own admission, former Fayetteville CPA Kimberly Kay O’Dell stole more than $1.56 million from clients who trusted her with their finances.

After evading authorities for two years, she was arrested last summer in New Orleans and brought back to Fayetteville. She pleaded guilty in federal court Sept. 8 to six counts of wire fraud, four counts of money laundering and one count of misuse of the U.S. Treasury Department’s name.

She faces a total of 161 years in prison and fines up to $2.51 million. She also could be ordered to pay restitution to her victims.

One longtime client — Northwest Arkansas developer Tom Terminella — is still plagued by the financial fallout from her crimes.

“I’m real confident she got $2 million to $3 million in a short period of time from two accounts,” Terminella said.

A middle-aged single mom with two daughters in college when the thefts began, O’Dell told authorities she stole to cover medical bills and living expenses.

Two lawsuits O’Dell filed a couple of years before her crimes were discovered portray her as a lonely, desperately ill woman who was herself a victim of fraud, betrayed by the lover she trusted enough to loan hundreds of thousands of dollars.

She’d also told many people she had pancreatic cancer, and accepted large sums of money from concerned well-wishers wanting to help her pay for treatment.

But Terminella’s attorney, Robert Ginnaven, says investigators never found any evidence that O’Dell was diagnosed with or treated for cancer, and the story was simply a scam.

“The worst part about this whole thing is she played on the emotions of friends across both Washington and Benton counties” with the cancer story, Terminella said.

1. “She was able to manipulate and steal hundreds of thousands, if not millions. She has absolutely devastated so many people beyond their ever recovering.”   

For someone to do that, Terminella added, “You’re a real lowlife, the bottom of the barrel.”

 

On the Lam

O’Dell, who’s in the Washington County Detention Center awaiting sentencing, said she can’t talk to the media, and her attorney, Ken Osborne, wouldn’t comment due to the pending sentencing.

Prosecutors also can’t say much about the case until she’s sentenced.

Conner Eldridge, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, offered this statement about O’Dell: “She has pleaded guilty to all indictments, and the violations resulted in tremendous financial loss to the victims in this case. It’s a very serious case to us and indicates our office is focused on prosecuting cases in which money is swindled from victims.”

Born in Watertown, Minn., on Jan. 3, 1961, O’Dell was in Northwest Arkansas by 1980, when she and her then-husband, Lawrence O’Dell, bought a home in Rogers.

By 1999, the marriage had ended, and Lawrence O’Dell died in March 2004 — reportedly a suicide.

Kimberly O’Dell got her CPA license in March 1994, and formed O’Dell & Associates PLC in November 1996.

By 1998, she counted the University of Arkansas chapter of Phi Delta Theta fraternity among her clients, along with Terminella and his wife, Monica, and Tom Terminella’s real estate firm, Terminella & Associates.

O’Dell began stealing from these clients in November 2005, according to her plea agreement.

In late 2008, the fraternity’s executive board noticed its bank account didn’t have as much money as it should and bills weren’t being paid.

Board members’ review of the Bank of America account, for which O’Dell had signatory authority, showed she had embezzled about $94,000 by writing checks to herself and transferring money into her own bank account in Florida.

Fayetteville police arrested O’Dell on Feb. 25, 2009, on a charge of theft of property. She was released on $5,000 bond, and after several delays, her trial was set for Aug. 3, 2009.

But when the court date came, she was a no-show.

O’Dell wasn’t heard from again until her arrest in New Orleans on June 15.

 

Back in Custody

Also in late 2008, Terminella began noticing irregularities in two dormant accounts he had with First State Bank of Lonoke.

Then shortly before O’Dell skipped out on her bond and fled the state, he said, the FBI came to him with a big stack of records documenting the thefts from the accounts.

“I was sick for a month,” Terminella said about the discovery.

Because O’Dell took most of her paper and computer files with her, Terminella said it’s difficult to determine exactly when the thefts began or how much she stole.

The plea agreement only specifically mentions about $75,000 taken from the Terminellas’ accounts, but a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office indicates the amount is nearly $1.5 million.

The thefts from the fraternity and the Terminellas eventually resulted in federal grand jury indictments.

How O’Dell was tracked to New Orleans hasn’t yet been disclosed, but Terminella said he got a tip that she’d been spotted there and alerted the authorities immediately.

Back in Fayetteville, O’Dell initially pleaded not guilty to the federal charges and trial was set for Sept. 1. But she reconsidered and entered a guilty plea on Sept. 8.

In the federal court system, pleading guilty is considered acceptance of responsibility, Eldridge said.

“A benefit of pleading is you get some points off your [sentencing] guideline range that’s recommended to the court, so you can get a slightly lower sentence,” he said.

Osborne, O’Dell’s attorney, said the U.S. probation office is preparing a pre-sentencing report with recommended sentence guidelines. Once that’s submitted to U.S. District Court Judge Jimm Hendren, he will set a date for the sentencing hearing.

 

Aftermath

O’Dell’s crimes have left considerable turmoil in their wake.

Hughes Covington, the fraternity chapter’s executive board member who made the initial call to police when the thefts were discovered, said the money O’Dell stole was collected from members’ dues.

“At the time, we were having to cut back on house improvements,” Covington wrote in an email. “Any surplus we had, we always put back into the house [for] either regular maintenance or house improvement projects.  

“I had started getting calls from our vendors wondering why they had not been paid. That is when I started wondering what was going on. We have always paid our vendors and I knew we should have had the cash flow to handle any bills.”

Fortunately, Covington wrote, some of the theft was covered by the fraternity’s insurance policy, allowing it to pay its vendors on time.

For the Terminellas, matters are much more complicated.

They are in post-judgment discovery regarding two foreclosures by the Lonoke bank, which is seeking to collect about $500,000 it claims the Terminellas still owe after the property in question was sold at auction in 2009.

That amount “pales in comparison” to the amount of money the bank allowed O’Dell to steal from two dormant accounts for which she did not have signatory authority, said Ginnaven, the Terminellas’ attorney.

The Terminellas filed two countersuits in Washington County Circuit Court in response to the foreclosures, saying the bank was negligent in not catching O’Dell’s forged checks and unauthorized wire transfers. The judge ruled in the bank’s favor and dismissed the countersuits.

As part of the ongoing post-judgment discovery, the Terminellas gave depositions to First State Bank’s attorney, Todd Lewis, on June 17.

That evening, the couple claims, they got several threatening phone calls from David Estes, the bank’s chairman and CEO.

Fearing for the safety of their four children, the Terminellas contacted Fayetteville police and were advised to leave their home for the night.

They later filed a complaint against Estes with the Fayetteville city prosecutor, who sent Estes a letter warning him to have no further contact with the Terminellas.

Estes has denied threatening them.

The couple filed suit in July against the bank and Estes, seeking damages for mental suffering. The case is set for trial in April.

But the week of the deposition brought Tom Terminella another phone call, this one with more welcome news — U.S. marshals had O’Dell in custody.

“I said, ‘Thank God,’” he said.

Speculating on what drove O’Dell to perpetrate her crimes, Terminella comes to a simple conclusion: “She’s just a common thief.”