She’s not laughing now.
A Staten Island human-resources manager with a history of financial scams doctored a jury summons to weasel out of work for a Baltimore getaway that included taking in a comedy show — and now she faces up to 14 years in prison, authorities said yesterday
Rebecca Thybulle, 32, was nabbed after her boss found evidence on her desk — while she was out for eight days on supposed jury duty — that she had altered a juror summons originally sent to her dad, according to court documents.
Thybulle was busted Tuesday after returning to the Amboy Road offices of Children’s Home Intervention Programs, a state-funded program for autistic kids, said Staten Island DA Daniel Donovan’s spokesman.
She was ordered held lieu of $25,000 bond yesterday.
Sources said Thybulle — who claimed to be a juror on a vehicular-homicide case — later tried to justify her cut-and-paste forgery job by saying, “I needed to take some personal time off. My boss would not allow me to without a good excuse, and even then would badger you about it.”
Thybulle’s Facebook page reveals that on Oct. 15 — the second day she missed work because of supposed jury duty — she posted the gleeful message: “Bmore bound!!!”
The next day, Thybulle posted on Facebook: “Off to Fogo de Chao then going to see Kevin Hart perform.”
Fogo de Chao is a Brazilian restaurant, and Hart is a comedian who was performing in Baltimore that night. Thybulle the next day wrote that she had missed Hart’s performance because it was “sold out.”
Her arrest came three weeks before she is due to be sentenced in Manhattan for attempted grand larceny, which stemmed from her theft of about $6,400 from Coffee Shop, a popular Union Square restaurant, where she had worked as payroll manager.
Thybulle also was convicted in 2002 of embezzling nearly $28,000 from a Poughkeepsie, NY, home for the elderly, where she was also in charge of payroll.
Court documents said that on Oct. 13, Thybulle handed her current boss, CHIP Director Lois Bond, a photocopy of a Staten Island court jury summons. The summons was sent to Thybulle at her home address, and it said she was required to call a phone number on that same day, hear a “recorded message [that] will tell you when and where to report,” the documents said.
The next day, Thybulle did not show up at work, and the day after, she called her boss to say, “I was picked for jury duty,” prosecutors said.
Her alleged scam was discovered when her boss Bond found paper on Thybulle’s desk showing that she had changed the date and name on an actual summons issued last month to her dad, Robert Thybulle, who lives at the same address, the documents said.
Thybulle also made some stupid mistakes, including having the document be from “Richmond County” instead of the state — which issues such summonses — and having the call-in date be for a Wednesday, which is never the case for those summonses, the court papers said.
Additional reporting by Joe Mollica