Fall From Grace

In this podcast episode, Katrina McLarin and Cheryl Womack share their personal and professional journey, detailing the rise and fall of Cheryl's entrepreneurial success, leading to her unexpected incarceration in a federal women's prison camp. 

They discuss the importance of trust in business, the consequences of financial mismanagement, and the lessons learned from a harrowing experience that could happen to anyone. The conversation emphasizes resilience and the need for vigilance in business dealings, especially when it comes to financial oversight.

Transcript

Katrina McLarin (00:35)
Welcome to the How to Go to Camp Surviving in a Federal Women's Prison

I'm Katrina McLarin.

Cheryl Womack (00:41)
And I'm Cheryl Womack.

Katrina McLarin (00:43)
first episode we want to start with today is Fall from Grace.

I thought it might be helpful, Cheryl, if people understood a little bit about how you and I actually know each other, a little bit about our backstory.

actually met when Cheryl owned an organization called the Leading Women Entrepreneurs of the World and we met in Sydney, Australia in May of 2004. So

Cheryl, you had actually already been inducted into that organization, is that correct, in 2002?

Cheryl Womack (01:06)
Yes,

I was inducted in Paris in 2002.

Katrina McLarin (01:09)
was interesting from my point of view is that I actually came in and met Cheryl as part of another honoree who was already in this group. So I went to Sydney to help Cheryl finish on the groundwork and to get her annual event completed and up and running in Sydney. So we actually met there and then very long story short, the event was over, Cheryl and I continued to talk and sort of liaise and I ended up moving, relocated my entire life and moved to Kansas, Kansas City, Kansas.

to be the executive director of the Star Group, which ran Leading Women for the next few years. And our primary role was to induct successful female entrepreneurs because there was really no global recognition arm for this type of, for an entrepreneur. That's correct in saying that. Don't you agree, Cheryl? Yeah.

Cheryl Womack (01:53)
do agree, and especially

on this level because on this level you had to have a minimum of 25 million in assets and have been in business for at least five years. So it was taking you to a different caliber of an entrepreneur and you had to be an owner.

Katrina McLarin (02:06)
and the amazing thing about this and at the time, like the statistics, if we go back to that point in time, which was sort of 2004 in Sydney and 2005 in Vancouver, we were looking at an organization that actually represented over 162 billion to the global economy, employed over half a million people around the world and had at that point inducted 310 female entrepreneurs. So this was a really powerful group of independent

business savvy women of which Cheryl was now the owner, also was also an inductee of this group. And so had already been recognized for her achievements in business and what she had done. And then I want to lead in Cheryl from here. You had sold your, tell the listeners how you made your money because it was insurance. So tell them how you did that.

Cheryl Womack (02:53)
I started a business in 1982 after working for a gentleman for a number of years and I wanted to sell for him and he didn't think women should sell. This is in the 80s, early 80s, and women really didn't go out and go anywhere. But anyway, long story short, I grew the business for 20 years, three, four, five different spin-offs of companies from an administrative company, an insurance agency, claims company, an association for independent truckers.

all coming together equaled about $100 million a year in revenue. And I grew it and I sold it when I was 50 years old, which interestingly was about when I thought I was going to sell and retire. Didn't retire, but I did sell. And just right as that was happening, I got inducted into this group. And while I was at it, I looked at one of my best friends there and said, we need to run this thing. We can do a better job. So that's pretty much how I got into this. I mean, it was very glamorous and

And it was a very social and it was just a lot of pomp and circumstance. And I wanted to make it a more meaningful exchange with women to learn from each other. So I'd been in other CEO groups that had a mix of men and women. I just saw the great possibilities with this group.

Katrina McLarin (03:59)
I want people to understand a little bit of the backstory of how you ended up going to a federal prison camp. Because to hear the story is just, it's crazy because it could actually happen to you. It could happen to you listening at home without even realizing that this could happen to you. So once you sold the insurance business, I want you to explain to people,

Cheryl Womack (04:12)
Absolutely.

Katrina McLarin (04:16)
what you then did, because this is, I came along maybe two years after and it was a whirlwind. So maybe you can talk a little bit about maybe not what to do, what you did and what not to do going forward.

Cheryl Womack (04:28)
My best advice to anyone when they sell a business of any size, maybe any business, is don't do anything just like to me if you get a divorce. Don't do anything for a year. Give yourself a year to sort sort your life out. Who are you? What do you want to be? Well, I didn't do that. By the time I'd met up with Katrina, I literally was invested in 30 other businesses. Some of them were, what you find out when you sell your business and you have new income is...

It isn't just you who's trying to spend your money. Your spouse is trying to spend your money. Your friends are trying to spend your money. Everybody's got great ideas for you to invest in. And I was trying really hard to understand all these different businesses. were literally things that were cash app that exists now. I literally had a program that I was working with Pepsi and an investment company to try to do a business like cash app in the early 2000s. That's how long ago that concept was started.

My husband decided we should get into a restaurant catering whatever business in a small town an hour and a half away. And I literally would find myself climbing and decorating a 30 foot upside down Christmas tree in the middle of a country town one day and the next day flying home packing and flying to Australia to hold an international event. I ended up being investing in a business that came out of China, Biologics that did testing for

disease and different kinds of things that were pharmaceutical. I invested in a business where the woman could check for, she could check your blood and see if you had any kind of disease at all. It could detect it very early and in a dirty environment. And that business ended up having DARPA, the government come in and partner with her, which I wanted it because it looked like she could do early research with cancer, But so I just got into so many businesses. So several things happened. I got into so many businesses. I brought a

my accountant who was with a very big account accounting firm. brought them on board. Um, the main guy who was doing my accounting through them, um, to help oversee the sell of this business. That's the biggest reason I brought them on board for $250,000 a year. And so while he's on board, he's supposed to be helping me look for investments, look at all the investments and help manage my money. I brought along, the accountant that, the bookkeeping accountant that I had left and we,

in the previous business were on a fairly complicated accounting system that fairly large companies used, not QuickBooks, not something that's easy to see. So just long story short, I just took my eye off the ball, trusted everybody too much, tried really hard to make sure I was doing the right investments and doing the right thing with everything I was doing and kept counting on everybody else doing their job. Now I could tell

that there were problems and things weren't going as smoothly as they should. And I was starting to see some red flags, but I had so many things going on my life that I just didn't need one more thing to blow up on me. And certainly not my accounting, not my basic books.

Katrina McLarin (07:11)
I'd like to just elaborate a fraction in on there because I was actually working for you at this point and we were actually based from your house in Kansas City. So I was very privy to how spread you were and how fractionated. And it was crazy from my point of view, we would be at that bistro in Missouri and you know, an hour and half away and we'd be doing a wedding for a hundred people.

and maybe looking at revenue of, I don't know, a couple of thousand, $3,000, then you and I would be jumping on a private jet and going and organizing a global event that would be spending millions of dollars. And it's important to understand that, and had I not been there, I could understand how maybe people would perceive things that you'd read online as being factually true. But I was there and I lived it with you and I can attest as to how fractionated you were. There were so many balls up in the air.

Cheryl Womack (07:37)
Yeah.

Katrina McLarin (07:59)
And actually you employed people to safeguard your interests. So you did have, you had an in-house counsel, you had the tax attorney that specialized in protecting your accounts and making sure that things were done properly. And you had a team of people around you. I was one factor that was off on our leading women side of your entities and of which actually your son was employed with me as well. So we were only a really small team, but a great team and we got a lot done.

Cheryl Womack (08:09)
literally.

Alright, yes,

yes.

Katrina McLarin (08:26)
But

so had I not been there, I could see how people could get sucked in by what you might read online and what you might see as being factually true.

Cheryl Womack (08:33)
One

of the businesses was a charter business. I bought jets to specifically set up and do charters out of Kansas City, but also be able to use it for my business because now I'm doing things internationally. I'm doing things in New York City. I'm doing things out in Los Angeles. I'm doing things in Phoenix, Arizona for this rival business that I was involved in. it was, I mean, there was just no time I didn't have paperwork out and I wasn't working on something whether I was on a plane or anywhere else. It was so bad that the

pilot who flew for me to have a meeting with me when he'd get me on the plane, he'd go, now I've got you and we need to have a meeting. Cause he couldn't figure out when to have a meeting with it's not bad enough that, mean, in fairness, the other thing that happens when you get that busy with everything is that my marriage was falling apart. And so now I'm stressing over what's happening with my marriage. Is this going to be okay? You know, we were married nearly 10 years and I don't know what's happening anymore.

He was giving me every sign that he needed more attention and, you know, be paid attention to more and that I had too much going on. And again, I put my head in the sand like an ostrich and just thought, I'll fix it later. I'll fix it later because I'm trying to keep up with everything and everybody got a little bit of time. None of it enough to do any good. I mean, it's really amazing if you think about the events that we put on that were quite remarkable that we put them on so successfully and hats off a lot to you for keeping that ball going. And I had some other people that did some things.

Katrina McLarin (09:40)
Yeah.

Cheryl Womack (09:51)
that kept their ball going. But unfortunately, I had some devious people around me who, once they saw the opportunity, began to take advantage.

Katrina McLarin (09:58)
Well, and let's get into that a little bit. we were talking small money and then we were talking big money. So it wasn't unusual, for example, and I'm going to use leading women because this is what I knew at the time, that we would charter a plane as a part of our event for five or six days with the women. For example, we chartered a plane from Vancouver to take the woman to Kelowna to go and do the ice wine experience. So that was like $150,000 charter.

unbeknownst obviously to Cheryl and to myself that when I would put through a request for a charter payment, Cheryl had someone who was in charge of her accounts that would also do a or wire transfer at the same time. So what was actually starting to happen is as there was so much moving through many different accounts, this person, and we can name her, it's publicized, Brandy, saw an opportunity of which that she could capitalize on and boy did she.

From my end, I didn't actually have personally a very good experience with Brandy. I just felt something was wrong, but I never knew what. But you know, when you work with someone in an environment, kind of, you know that they're kind of backstabbing you and you know that it's not great, but you don't quite know what it is and you can't pinpoint it. So for Cheryl, when you're looking at your numbers and you're starting to see things, How much did she take from you in the end over a period of time?

Cheryl Womack (11:11)
Well,

I can tell you to this day, I don't know exactly how much I can because I constantly think of something new that I forgot to count in what she stole. Let me give you an example. An example is that when I bought automobiles, whether I bought a truck for my husband or a company car, I always paid cash for them. And suddenly I had a $1,300 a month truck payment coming through. Now that should have been a red flag for me to go a truck payment, you know, but

She just put it through like I'm late on Dean's pickup truck. need to put this through. So she was set up matching credit cards to American Express or whatever cards I had. And then whenever I made a payment of 25 or 50,000 or whatever it was that month for all the variety of businesses and the expenses, she would turn around and make a matching payment. So she did that. Plus put the loan payment through literally when I was flying home from South Africa, she wired a loan company $29,000 to pay

antique Mustang she'd bought for her husband.

I mean,

bought a lake house. I she just spent it in so many different ways. And I had her up north at an office space I had and I was working south where I had an office south, but I worked out of my house a lot and at the south office. And I knew if I went up there, I'd blow things up because then I have to start having answers and I'd have to, it's just one more thing that I needed to get to the bottom of in all sincerity. It's the most important thing I should have gotten to the bottom of, but I didn't.

Another thing I thought I did is I thought I'd locked up $10 million worth of my assets and some funds in a bank that she could not touch. As we went and looking at all these things, found out somewhere along the way she'd given me a document that I signed that gave her access to that $10 million. So where I thought everything, everything.

Katrina McLarin (12:44)
So she had access to everything, everything. Now,

one thing to explain too, maybe a little bit as a part of Al's employment, who was your tax attorney. Yeah, his job was like anyone's, we all look to how we can pay the least amount of tax. I don't care who you are in business, of course we do. As a part of what he set up for you, he set up and he had this with multiple clients, it's important to understand this, that you had started to set up some of your businesses and some of your interests were in the Cayman Islands.

Cheryl Womack (12:54)
for me.

Katrina McLarin (13:13)
unbeknownst to you at the... It will be advised to you.

Cheryl Womack (13:14)
No, he didn't do that. He didn't do that.

My insurance company. when I went into reinsurance and business for myself, then Fireman's Fund is who advised me. I had been in a rent a captive in Bermuda with a different insurance company, Legion. And they were taking too big a chunk of the pie and trying to raise my rates. And I felt like I was controlling things enough and giving them good losses and I couldn't get them to negotiate. So Fireman's Fund

agreed to take my business and they said, we do it in Grand Cayman. I'm going to take you there. You're to do business with this bank, with this lawyer, with this. I mean, they literally told me you can go wherever you want, but if you don't use these people, we won't be your friend in front and company. So my entire relationship in Grand Cayman came from Fireman's Fund to do it. It was a legitimate reinsurance, it reinsurance business in Grand Cayman. And back then, just so that people need to know,

Katrina McLarin (13:55)
Right.

Cheryl Womack (14:05)
You can go now to Delaware, a host of other states where you can do it domestically. You could not do that back then. The United States had not come into doing captives. And so you had no ability to do that. And so you did have to go offshore. So I started that in 1996, 1997. That's how it all started.

Katrina McLarin (14:23)
So you

already had established interest then in the Cayman Islands long before any of this ever came up. And one thing I do want to point out to people is that Al, your tax attorney, was in charge of Brandy. So the checks and balances were supposed to take place long before you ever got to them. The unfortunate thing is that, and I think I can say this, the only time I went to the office, because I was based predominantly out of Cheryl's home,

Cheryl Womack (14:30)
forever.

Katrina McLarin (14:50)
was, know, Al spent a lot of time at Hooters. That was the reality. Yeah, and I was shocked because I'm thinking, my God, I've got a rough idea of how much you're earning. And there was just, there seemed like at this point in time, it was a bit of a free for all and there wasn't any sort of accountability. It's important too, for other people to understand that Cheryl wasn't at her offices in Kansas because she wasn't actually allowed to be. When she sold the insurance company,

Cheryl Womack (14:53)
always at a bar.

Katrina McLarin (15:14)
they had had two floors within that building and as a part of that in the end, she was not meant to be on site. So this also helps to explain how the office was its own little world

Cheryl Womack (15:24)
so uncomfortable because you'd go there and you had employees who just thought you'd thrown them under the bus and sold the business and left them hanging. I thought I'd made a really good deal for them. I've required them to lease office space and do their business in Kansas city as part of the sale. So they couldn't fire my employees. And instead of them realizing all the things that I carved out and tried to do for them.

They just thought I'd abandoned them because I was a good boss. had on-site daycare. We had great benefits, my husband wanted me to sell and partly I was ready to sell I don't know if I was ready to sell, but I was, needed to make some changes And I just, I needed to, you know, I needed to take some time and figure out who are you now that you're not.

Cheryl will make the insurance person with truckers.

Katrina McLarin (16:03)
And look, as you've said earlier, the smart move would have been maybe to do nothing for a year or two and just enjoy life until you figured those things out. But you're an entrepreneur at heart and in spirit. So you just, you looked to replace that energy that you probably put into your own business elsewhere and you can't always reproduce that. But so the important thing out of the whole thing is that actually you weren't really, you weren't allowed to be in your own office building.

Cheryl Womack (16:26)
the other thing I think to point out is I had a couple people I was literally mentoring for their businesses and helping them pull their businesses out of the fire where they were having problems and getting them on a good path, which we did successfully. So again, I was crazy. It was not a good situation. I didn't do anything to make it better. Hindsight will tell you everything you could have done differently. And all I was trying to do is just hysterically get through it all. And it was not a very happy time.

Katrina McLarin (16:53)
become sort of almost like survival mode. when did you find out that Brandy had stolen? At this point, we know it's around the 3 million mark and it was never finalized. We know it's more, but at this point, how did you find out? What was brought to your attention for you to know, my God, I've got a problem? You knew there was a problem, but you didn't think it was financial mismanagement. So let's be clear about that. Yeah.

Cheryl Womack (17:03)
Yes.

No, right.

so she left and she came and said she's going to go work for an investment company. And she came and let me know. And I'm like, wow. And I went, okay. and she was giving me two weeks notice and, it was a problem because none of us knew how to work the accounting system that she had learned to work in the old company coming forward, which was quite complicated. So that scared me to death, but,

she went ahead and she quit and I thought, well, we're going to start putting this all onto QuickBooks and just start moving everything and get it fixed. And here came tax time, January, and the people who do our W-2s and 1099s that you have to do at the end of the tax year for the IRS came and said, well, looks like Brandy paid for college through the business. Am I giving her a 1099 for this? And I'm like, what? Because I'd given her

Katrina McLarin (18:01)
My god.

Cheryl Womack (18:02)
I'd given her permission to take two hour lunches to go to college. I'd never agreed to pay for anything. Only to find out what she did is she would pay for it on my credit card and then drop some of the classes and get the credit back on her credit card. So she made money on it. was, mean, the things I uncovered were insanity. I mean,

Katrina McLarin (18:18)
my goodness.

You know, I

just never thought she was that clever. So even I was shocked by that, yeah, go figure, go figure.

Cheryl Womack (18:26)
I'm here. mean,

so as I'm finding out she's stealing the money, I bring her forward and it looks to me like we think she's, you know, at about half a million dollars, something like that. By the time we look at some things and maybe half a million dollars and we bring her in to talk to her and she admits that yes and you know said nobody really ever liked her and a bunch of other things that just didn't matter.

Katrina McLarin (18:46)
she tried to make it personal as though it was me, played the victim. Yeah, yeah.

Cheryl Womack (18:49)
Yeah, she

played and I'm just sitting there devastated and I've got Al Davis in there with me, Teresa who helped me with leading women in a bunch of businesses and had been my friend for 20 years and still is and myself. I just said, I just can't believe you took this money from me. so I said, well, Teresa is going to continue to go through things.

Katrina McLarin (18:58)
And still is. Yep.

Cheryl Womack (19:08)
If there's anything else you want to tell me about this, you need to tell me. No, no, that's it. I'm sure that's it. It's 385,000. I'm sure that's it. So she was going home to look some things up. And then we began to start finding the wires for 25 and $50,000. They're very hard because again, on the bookkeeping, you had to go into this complicated system and not just put it in, but put notes in. Well, one of the things she did through the course of those four years is put numbers in with no support, no notes. So now you're going to look at money and you don't even know what it's, it was.

nightmare.

Katrina McLarin (19:38)
mean, it sounds

like a forensic accounting, you know what I mean? It's so crazy.

Cheryl Womack (19:43)
nightmare for me to be able to figure out what she took or she didn't take.

Katrina McLarin (19:46)
And this person you were very close to, you spoke just about every day. She was across all of your companies. So we're not just talking.

Cheryl Womack (19:51)
Yes,

I paid for her in vitro and I paid for her husband to get a reverse vasectomy. Now I didn't know I was paying for those, but I did. So it was just like, what? I mean, the thing about

Katrina McLarin (19:55)
Yeah, turns out.

No.

and the holiday

home and the classic car. there's no doubt, you know, that raises an interesting question that I always knew coming into your world that I was a part of someone else's life and someone else's money and someone else's existence. For looking at people and Brandy and what she did to you, she thought she was you. And that, yeah, and it's just crazy. And I still to this day can't fathom how she could do that. And as I know that you can't. So at what

Cheryl Womack (20:22)
He just wants me to play.

Katrina McLarin (20:30)
point did you make the decision, okay, I can't let this go because I wouldn't have been happy letting 30,000 go, let alone 300 and it's climbing. Well, at what point do you say, okay, well, we need to do something, the police needs to be involved, what happens there?

Cheryl Womack (20:43)
Well, I told her she needed to come in and talk to me and go through the rest of these numbers and tell me where the money was in the course of the next few days. And she refused to come and she refused to come. And I just finally said, I'm going to go to the FBI. I'm going to turn you in. You have to come tell me what's going on with this or I'm going to turn you in. And so she looked at me and she and said, if I go down, you're going down. went, what would I be going down Brandy's a planner.

Katrina McLarin (21:08)
Yeah.

Cheryl Womack (21:09)
Brandy

on how she would take me down. I didn't see it. I couldn't fathom it. I'm sitting in front of the FBI and talking and just carrying on and telling them all the things and I'm so, I'm telling them she's going to

Katrina McLarin (21:21)
Hang on,

so she threatens you. That's how the conversation starts. When you call her out, she actually threatened you. And you're like, no, this is not okay. I've done nothing wrong. I've paid for people to safeguard my interests. I'm going to pursue it as you should do and be able to do. then, yeah. So you make a call to the FBI and the FBI wants to sit down and meet with you to explain that part because this is where it goes pear shaped unbeknownst to you really.

Cheryl Womack (21:23)
Yeah, so threatens me. threatens me.

And I did. And I did, yeah.

he took the initial notes, but what really happened was in a short period of time, what I did not realize is after they talked to Brandy on the phone and talked to me for, she had numbers and figures and everything she wanted to share with them. And she immediately came out with, she's hiding money in the Cayman Islands. Well, the money she was saying I was hiding was the reinsurance Cayman business and you have to leave a reinsurance business in place intact. I have letters of.

credit against this in case a claim goes so bad that it takes all the money that I would have to cough up money out of a letter of credit out of my own funds that I've had supported by the funds that are sitting in this account. And I can't take them down by my contract with Fireman's Fund until all the claims are paid. Well, when you say

Katrina McLarin (22:29)
And that's part

of the settlement, the sale of your business, right? That was a condition. Yeah, yeah.

Cheryl Womack (22:31)
part of my contract.

if anybody's done business in California, they know that work comp claims in California can take 10 and 15 years to settle. So I knew this was going to be a slow bow from China, and it would be a long time coming. I just never realized somebody to act like that was stolen money and that I was hiding money there because for a while I spent 50 % of my time in Cayman, and I literally licensed me there and filed my taxes out of there.

So I was never afraid that this would be a problem for me. And to this day, the IRS never came to me and asked me, what are you doing with this money? What's happening in Cayman? They never came and asked me those things. The FBI came in asking me and said, I need to set up a meeting with you. And they set it up for me and they had to see me by this certain date. They had to see me. So I was in New York and I flew home to make sure I met the meeting. And I said, do I need to have an attorney? no, absolutely not. I'd like Teresa to come sit in on the meeting with me.

They're supposed to let you have a witness. When you say you have an attorney, they're supposed to go get your attorney. I was stupid. I sat there for a few minutes and they said, no, we, just, we're here to talk to you about Brandy because we think we found where she hid some other money. And this is what he's telling me. So he's telling me this. And I listened to him a few minutes and he started asking me questions about Cayman and he started asking me questions about just money and business and stuff. And I just said, wait a minute, what is this about? And I said, what are we talking about?

Katrina McLarin (23:28)
Yeah.

Cheryl Womack (23:50)
And he goes, well, I'm trying to get to the bottom of some of these things on Brandy. And of course he's got a person with them. They just take notes. They don't record anything. And so I said, I'm not comfortable having this conversation with you. I think we're done. So I had been deposed by the United States of America for Al Davison's case, where Al Davison was, they were looking at him for tax issues. And when they'd post,

me at that case, they were asking me a lot about all my businesses. And they read into that FBI report, like he'd asked me all these questions about all those businesses, which he had not. He just had not. So I guess what I want to make clear, just to make the story short, is what I got charged with was impeding the government. Now, I can't give you a good definition of that. guess, you know, I'm not being forthright. I'm not sharing and giving them enough information, but they never came to me for information.

They went and interviewed 150 different people across the United States, Canada, and Cayman. And they came up with one witness who could testify against me when they took me to court, the person who stole from me, Brandy Wheeler. Only one person out of 150.

Katrina McLarin (24:57)
And isn't it crazy to think that she was able to provide after she'd left your employment, supposed numbers and all this detail and information of your company's business and intellectual property that she was never ever meant to leave with or allowed to leave with. And so she had the full authority while she was in your employee to adapt, change and alter. So it's crazy.

Cheryl Womack (25:17)
Literally

in court case, they presented a file in front of her and they had her read it and showed the way that she presented it. And I can't remember what it said, but it said something straight out like, know, Brandy's calling me out on something and she's not comfortable with that or something like that. then they showed a different one and they showed where she doctored the email. And we were talking about, I wasn't comfortable with something that had to do with our personal lives.

It had absolutely nothing to do with business, but she turned that email in to try to say, look, she's even admitting in this email later at the end that she's not comfortable with what's happening here.

Katrina McLarin (25:42)
Yeah.

Well, the reality is if she's going to falsify something like an email, of course she's going to falsify your financial records. The irony is that the FBI sees you as the bigger fish and that's the reality. They tried to go after Al Davidson because they wanted to go after his client list, I think really in a and you're the bigger fish. So Brandy, at this point, you ended up taking her to civil court. She is actually found guilty. She does do time.

Cheryl Womack (25:59)
Yes.

Katrina McLarin (26:15)
I think, what was it? Was it 12 months Cheryl?

Cheryl Womack (26:18)
I found out later was when the FBI sat down with the prosecuting attorney in Kansas City, Missouri, when they sat down and opened up Brandy's file to make her, give her a file and a case and open an investigation, they opened up one on me at the very same time. I had no idea, none.

Katrina McLarin (26:35)
Yeah, and then they never disclosed that to you. So how long does Brandy end up actually doing time for and what was the restitution

Cheryl Womack (26:43)
got 12 months in a day and in federal court you get good time for anything over 12 months. So that day put her over 12 months. So she did eight months time. Eight months, eight months. She owed me, they charged her for a million one. And I think to date she's paid me $200,000.

Katrina McLarin (26:52)
Eight months.

And we know that it's over three million of what's actually already been documented. not bad for eight months prison time, over $3 million is what Brandy, that's how she profited out of this. now, yeah, absolutely crazy. we can jump a little bit to then what happened. So they've opened a file against you. When this starts to all come to light, I want people to really understand that this then goes on for nine years of your life.

Cheryl Womack (27:04)
yeah. This has been ordered.

Absolutely.

Katrina McLarin (27:27)
and costs you $15 million because an employee stole and embezzled from you. And it can happen to anyone. It happened to Martha Stewart. She wasn't convicted for insider trading. She was same situation that you found yourself in. impeding the government. To me, it seems almost like, this some sort of loophole that if they can't get you and they really want you, let's just throw out the impeding the government and we'll go that path.

Cheryl Womack (27:43)
We like to see.

Well, and I stupidly kept thinking the truth will set me free. I'm going to be okay because if somebody just comes and talks to me and asks, where did this come from and where did this come from, or just let me get in trial. You know, just let me get into trial. And I think a jury will believe, you know, that, that I didn't know what she was doing and that the, the Cayman business was legitimate. Of you've got attorneys going, you just have to say Cayman and they're going to, you're going away. You're going to go to jail. You're just, it was, mean, they did things like when, because the people in Cayman were not us citizens.

when they would pass through in Florida to go to Canada to see their family, the FBI and IRS would literally meet them at the Miami airport and pull them off the plane, make them miss the next plane, and try to ask them questions about me. Come ask me.

Katrina McLarin (28:35)
didn't they, approached people on the golf course at a charity event. There was very underhanded tactics that anyone could read this and look into it with the court documents and understand that I felt it was very underhanded.

Cheryl Womack (28:48)
Well, I think one

more thing that's important to point out is during the, had a, I can't remember his call, but we had like a pre hearing on things before there was a plea agreement made. And in the pre hearing, the magistrate judge literally declared the FBI agent a liar and said, I'm, Ms. Womack has going to have a right to appeal whatever decision happens here, because I'm going to say you're not telling the truth. It made them crazy, but he stayed a liar.

Katrina McLarin (29:14)
So in the end, because you'd spent all this money, I want people to understand why you made a plea deal. Because I know that you wouldn't have been fighting it for nine years to then get to that point. And it's soul destroying to have to do this and what it does. It's also an impact. You've got two grown children. So you've got two adult sons. You're married. You've got extended family. You've got friends. And all of a sudden you're painted in a light.

where you always had a very good reputation for having charitable endeavors and were supportive and donated a lot of money every year. We're very active in mentoring.

yeah.

Cheryl Womack (29:49)
balls, raised money, helped people with different various fundraising activities, both giving money to them and helping them put the events on. So I was very active in the

heart wrenching, embarrassing, just hard to imagine. But that wasn't what made me give up. The part that made me finally give up was I finally came to the realization I could spend every last penny of everything I had left.

And I wouldn't have enough for us to retire on for me to raise my family on to survive a business with. I just was going broke. I went $4 million in debt. and I hadn't been in debt in a long time. I'd had my house paid for, you know, when I retired, when I saw the business and I was in a really good place to advance and go forward. Suddenly I'm in debt and I don't see it ending. And I literally, I also made a plea deal because I had an attorney who after

collecting five plus million dollars for me, told me I'm gonna make a plea deal or she needed another million dollars to go on with the case. And basically I felt like I just got blackmailed into making a plea deal.

Katrina McLarin (30:46)
reaches a point like anything where you feel like your back's against a wall and you've just got to make a decision. I mean, you and I are friends and I've said to you, I wasn't happy with the plea deal. I can't believe that you ended up doing more time than Brandy did. And that's the crazy thing about this whole situation. So the plea deal you accepted, what did you accept in the end? How many months did you have to do in a prison camp, in a federal prison camp?

Cheryl Womack (31:07)
Well, he just basically told me, the judge basically said anybody could do 12 months in jail. Of course, I wanted to say, let me bring your wife with me. And that, course, I knew better. he gave me 18 months, even though he said anybody could do 12 months in jail. He gave me 18 months and I ended up doing 15 months. 14 months would have been my time, but I stayed an extra month because of the circumstances of going to a halfway house and being in a more dangerous environment.

than it would have been if I stayed a month longer at the camp.

Katrina McLarin (31:33)
Cheryl, it's a remarkable story. Is there anything that you would give to advice to other business owners looking back now when it comes to your own numbers and understanding your, is it control that you wouldn't give up ever again to someone? What would you do differently?

Cheryl Womack (31:47)
Oh, I can tell you now, I have every account I have linked to everything I've got and I can look, if somebody who puts something on a credit card or writes a check, it comes through on an app for me and I can see it where I'm looking at them going, what'd you spend, what'd that go for? I know and I just make it a point to know everything about, I'm down to basically four businesses and I watch them like a hawk and that would, number one, I'd say don't do anything for a year, think about your money carefully about that and then I would also say,

make sure my whole time while I had this huge business, I knew my money and my numbers better than anybody else. I cannot tell you to this day why I got stupid and just trusted everybody else to take care of my numbers. Maybe I was overwhelmed by the amount and the sell. I can't explain that to you to this day, but it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

Katrina McLarin (32:35)
there was just so many balls you had up in the air that it was crazy. And I think also Brandy was very good at redirecting your attention on the things that she wanted you to have attention on. I remember us having an argument one day over $120 fuel, fuel, fuel expense.

Cheryl Womack (32:50)
Right.

Yes.

Katrina McLarin (32:52)
And

I know that that was directed because Brandy would have highlighted it and directed it because that's what she was very, very good at doing.

Cheryl Womack (32:59)
we go to find petty cash that's got $1,300 cash sitting in it, which I never would have allowed there to be that much cash sitting in a petty cash. Like what? It was insanity, insanity.

Katrina McLarin (33:09)
Yeah,

it was insanity, but you know what? It's like anything in life and you're resilient, you're very resilient. One thing that the listeners won't realize is that you grew up in a poor Hispanic family, one of 11 children. So you grew up poor and poverty stricken.

So incredible to think that you could rise to above to have a hundred million dollar insurance company. You even featured as an entrepreneur, a successful entrepreneur on an Oprah magazine.

I was there with you when you did the photo shoot in Maryville in Missouri. So there is a great legacy that's still there that shouldn't be tarnished because of this, of what actually happened to you. And I think this podcast is gonna help people understand that, what not to do, what to look for in their businesses. And then also, if you're on the flip side of things and you're facing something like this, and it doesn't matter if you're wealthy, not wealthy, wherever your social status in life is,

This book, How to Go to Camp, Surviving in a Federal Woman's Prison Camp, is gonna give you the tools that you'll need because there's nothing else like this out there on what to do and how to go about it in a really easy and simplistic way. And that's how we'll be starting the next episode. Thanks Cheryl, and thank you everyone for listening.