A Hayner Hoyt jobsite in 2011.The vice president of a Syracuse, New York, construction firm who rose through the ranks in 13 years with the company, has been charged with embezzling more than $266,000.
According to a report from the Syracuse Post-Standard, police have charged John M. Rubar, 44, with second-degree grand larceny. A police investigation found that Rubar had been stealing from the Hayner Hoyt Corporation since January 2008.
Rubar was named vice president of Hayner Hoyt subsidiary Doyner Inc. in 2009. Hayner Hoyt president Jeremy Thurston began to hear negative reports about Rubar in the summer of 2013. Employees said that Rubar wasn’t showing up to work most days of the week and Thurston began to see financial performance issues as well at Doyner.
Rubar blamed “the economy” when he was confronted about these issues. Thurston remained suspicious and put a GPS tracking device on Rubar’s company-provided vehicle. He was fired on January 23 after the GPS tracking found that he often lied about where he was and missed several meetings, according to the Post-Standard report.
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In the days following the firing, Thurston reviewed Rubar’s financial records and found that he had been stealing diesel from the company for more than 10 years, the paper reports. Rubar had ordered the fuel 200 gallons at a time and had it delivered to his home where he was apparently storing it in a bulk fuel tank.
If that wasn’t bad enough, on one occasion Rubar told one of the Doyner employees to build a concrete driveway at his residence and then billed the hours and supplies to an account for a casino project the company was working on.
In addition, Rubar had purchased ATVs, toys and other materials with company money and he was found to have faked credit card receipts for expense reports on his work computer.
More troublesome, Rubar was able to get another job with Paragon Environmental Construction though its unclear if his arrest has affected that job.
