COVINGTON, Ky Nov 21 2019 The woman who used to hold the purse strings at the Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Bureau (MeetNKY) admits to stealing more than $4 million from the agency. In a twist, Bridget Johnson was actually the victim of a Match.com scam.

A judge found Johnson guilty of complicity to theft, abuse of public trust and unlawful access to a computer.

Johnson admitted that she used her position as finance director to access the MeetNKY bank accounts and send dozens of checks to what she thought was her boyfriend whom she met on Match.com. She believed he was a businessman from Ft. Thomas and that they were dating, even though they never met. He would ask her to wire money so he could come home and see her, according to a Covington detective.

Commonwealth Attorney Rob Sanders said most of that money was then wired to overseas accounts. Sanders said the money trail “went cold in China where investigators were no longer able to track the bank transfers.”

Eventually, the executive director of MeetNKY was alerted to the thefts. Johnson had altered bank records for a year to hide her thefts.

Johnson never kept any of the money she stole but continued to send funds to the scammers to try to get approximately $250,000 of her own money back that she’d already lost, according to Sanders.

“Until Ms. Johnson started taking tax dollars from her employer, she was the largest individual victim of theft I’ve ever seen, but now she’s the largest thief.”

Johnson will be sentenced December 12.

WKRC

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