After stealing $1.9M from insurance clients, Wichita man took $40K from animal clinic

Pennington was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge John W. Broomes, according to court records and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Kansas.

The thefts from El Paso Animal Hospital came on the heels of another case where Pennington, a former State Farm insurance agent, was charged in 2013 with stealing more than $1.9 million from his clients' life insurance policies. Among accusations lodged against Pennington in that case were that he forged clients' names on documents and changed the addresses on their policies, lied about the nature of his relationship with a client whom he claimed was his mother-in-law when his agency asked why an insurance check was sent to Pennington's office instead of her home, and lied to a bank about his child support and alimony obligations and his then-wife's employment status.

His victims included a longtime Wichita public schools teacher and philanthropist, whose money paid for Pennington's personal expenses, The Eagle previously reported.

Around three months before he applied for the bookkeeping job at El Paso Animal Hospital and was hired in July 2020, Pennington successfully petitioned the court to end his supervised release in the insurance fraud case about a year early, court records show. He had been ordered to serve a 42-month federal prison sentence followed by three years of supervised release in that case. He was released from prison in April 2018, according to an inmate locator on the Federal Bureau of Prisons' website.

Court records say when Pennington submitted his application and resume online to El Paso Animal Hospital, he lied and said he had never been convicted of a felony crime, even though he had pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and one count of attempted bank fraud in the insurance fraud case and was ordered to pay more than $392,000 in restitution. The indictment says El Paso based its decision to hire Pennington in part on his fraudulent employment application.

Soon after Pennington started work at the animal clinic on July 6, 2020, he accessed its payroll systems "and began transferring embezzled funds, via interstate wire transmissions" to his personal bank accounts without permission, a 17-page indictment filed on April 18, 2023, says.

Pennington transferred money under the guise of payroll payments into his personal accounts on at least 29 occasions between July 31, 2020, and Sept. 15, 2021. The payments were mostly made every two weeks, the indictment shows.

He also used one of the clinic's credit cards to pay for personal expenses, including three trips to a Derby auto repair shop costing more than $2,600, more than $800 in charges to an online events ticket seller called Seat Geek, and a year's worth of YouTube TV subscriptions.

He also laundered $6,700 of the stolen money through another bank personal account and additional funds through his PayPal account, which he used to make at least 11 restitution payments of $50 in his other criminal case.

The clinic never gave him permission "to change his rate of pay, transfer funds other than legitimate payroll, or use the EPAH credit card for personal use, gain or expenses," the indictment says.

In all, the animal clinic lost $40,497.86, Pennington's plea agreement says.

In addition to the prison term, Pennington's sentencing judge ordered him to pay nearly $51,000 in restitution, most to a debt collection agency. He must also serve three years of supervised release after he is released from prison, court records show.

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