San Diego Zoo biologist who stole thousands is sentenced and facing deportation
A former San Diego Zoo biologist may be deported after he was sentenced to federal prison for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the zoo in a years-long fake invoice scheme.
Matthew John Anderson was sentenced in San Diego federal court to six months in prison on a theft charge, said U.S. Attorney’s officials in San Diego.
The 17-year San Diego Zoo veteran admitted in March to creating dozens of fake invoices using the names of fictitious vendors to submit to the zoo for payment for products Anderson neither bought nor received, Department of Justice officials said.
Anderson managed to pull off the bogus invoice scheme for eight years to the sum of nearly $237,000. Zoo officials sent money to the accounts Anderson controlled and to third parties who funneled kickbacks to Anderson.
Anderson, 50, paid back the full amount, but was scolded by U.S. District Judge Larry A. Burns.
“You cannot systematically steal over a period and just say that you will pay it back,” Burns told Anderson, according to the U.S. Attorney’s statement.
The judge said Anderson’s actions were not the product of a single lapse in judgment; rather, a long term abuse of trust, before remanding the man into federal custody.
“For years, this defendant took advantage of the trust of one of (San Diego’s) beloved institutions,” U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer said in a statement announcing the Sept. 28 sentencing. “His theft compromised the San Diego Zoo’s world-renowned conservation work, made possible by government grants, charitable donations and the work of thousands of unpaid volunteers.”
Anderson, a native of the United Kingdom may be forced to leave the U.S. as a result of his sentence, U.S. Attorney’s officials said in the statement. He began his career at the San Diego Zoo as a research fellow and was Director of Behavioral Biology at its Institute for Conservation Research before he was dismissed in 2017, U.S. Attorney’s officials said.
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