Report: Employee Embezzled $100k From Sharam and Yoshitoshi Records

It has been revealed that in May authorities in Virginia arrested and charged Kristin Gardner Kelly, an employee at Sharam‘s Yoshitoshi label, with one count of embezzlement and two counts of forgery. It is alleged that Kelly stole in excess of $100,000 from Sharam, a charge she denies.

According to the Washington Post, Kelly was hired as a bookkeeper at Yoshitoshi in the fall of 2010 and in the spring of 2012 Yoshitoshi staff noticed that venders weren’t getting paid. According to Sharam’s lawyer, Timothy Davis, an internal investigation revealed that Kelly had been writing checks to herself, using the Yoshitoshi debit card and misusing company funds to pay one of her many divorce lawyers.

But the plot thickens: In June 2009, Kelly was arrested for embezzlement from Waterford Receptions, another Virgina-based company. The Post reports she pleaded guilty, and in February 2010 was given a three-year sentence, with all but six months suspended. She was allowed to be on work release while serving her six months, and also ordered to make restitution of $147,709, court records show.

Kelly, who in a separate case in Fairfax, VA is alleged to be a bigamist (she is accused of being married to two men at at the same time) is currently free on bond, but the judge in the Waterford case sent her back in jail for 10 days in September for failing to report to her probation officer, and she is still facing more than two years of prison time in that case.

Sharam, who didn’t grant the paper an interview, has reportedly made amends with outstanding debtors.

Kelly is due back in court of December.

We’ll keep you updated on this story as it develops.

Compilation Review: Sharam / ‘Night & Day’ (Yoshitoshi)

★★★☆☆

Beats by day, beats by night, right? Wrong. Whether by design or luck, the Deep Disher’s two-disc split is interchangeable; blindfolded, you’d struggle to make out which is which. The core of the Day mix minds its own business, tugging at ears with fleeting bursts of sunshine progressing into a deep/tribal/funky house lumber, all bompity-bomp beats that you can reasonably hold conversations over when waving at the party from afar. Alas, disc one can just as easily worm its way past sunset and into the most remote island recesses making you break curfew.

Yet from long periods of keeping on the straight and narrow, Extrawelt cuts in with robust electro-house, and Maetrik grumbles with a definite grab for night vision goggles. Taking you by surprise, the Day mix includes Prince Club’s “Love Strong,” a plastic handbag houser sampling the Backstreet Boys, and goes way back with Boris Dlugosch’s “Keep Pushin’.”

The Night mix, having started with a more cheerier daylight perspective but kickstarted by Sharam’s own “Our Love,” mischievously sneaks in a snatch of the Sneaker Pimps’ “Spin Spin Sugar.” It’s another revelation found in the middle of deep and dirty tech pumps ideal for midnight runs, grizzly bro-step house beats (Dubsidia versus Dirtyloud), mainstream hopefuls, tough bass, returns to funky sunshine and a closing ragga-D’n’B finale. It shows Sharam isn’t one to be taking requests – his ones and twos, his rules, whatever the hour is.
File under: Avicii, Marco Bailey, Stefano Noferini