On May 23, 2000 at 11:35 A.M. Menlo Park Officer Jill Jensen investigated a reported embezzlement at Ventana Property Services. Investigation revealed that Suspect Elizabeth Virrey De Los Santos had been employed as a Controller for Ventana, a property management business, for seven years. She was entrusted with writing payroll checks for the company's employees.  In April, 2000, De Los Santos resigned from Ventana when she could not reconcile the account books. Ventana hired a temporary accountant who discovered that the discrepancy was because De Los Santos had, over a several year period, been writing checks to herself, her own mortgage holder, her credit card company, phone company and many others from the payroll account. In total she embezzled $305,303.28.

On 6/7/00 at 8:00 P.M. Detectives Eric Cowans and Paul Kunkel contacted De Los Santos at her home in Hayward. She was later arrested and booked into San Mateo County Jail on 178 counts of 503 P.C. (embezzlement). The filing status of this case is unknown at time of media release, that information can be obtained by calling the San Mateo County District Attorney's Office at 650-363-4677

Please contact Detectives Eric Cowans or Paul Kunkel with any information regarding this matter at 650-858-3300.   ####