Bad cookie who embezzled almost $370,000 from Girl Scouts sentenced to prison

(Image credit: Facebook.com/GirlScoutsUSA)

last updated 8 January 2015

You mess with the Girl Scouts, you wind up in prison. That's the lesson one man learned after he embezzled close to $370,000 from the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles.

Channing Smack was sentenced Tuesday to 20 months in prison for mail fraud and money laundering. He has also been ordered to pay $368,278 in restitution, The Daily Beast reports — or the equivalent of more than 81,800 boxes of Thin Mints.

Smack was a senior property manager for the group, and approved maintenance payments to an organization that was registered in the name of his deceased brother. After writing 23 checks to the ZB Land Maintenance & Engineering company, Girl Scouts officials decided to hire a private investigator, who discovered that the money going to the firm was actually making its way to Smack. Smack was arrested in December and pleaded guilty in January.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.