Idaho woman, a longtime Saint Al’s employee who stole over $1M, sentenced to 41 months

A Horseshoe Bend woman who embezzled more than $1 million from the Saint Alphonsus Health System was sentenced to 41 months in prison for wire fraud, the Idaho U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Monday.

Lois Soito, 60, who worked for Saint Al’s for 22 years, also was ordered by 4th District Judge David Nye to serve three years of supervised release after her prison term and to pay $1.48 million in restitution, according to a press release.

Soito pleaded guilty last November after being indicted in August by a federal grand jury on 10 counts of wire fraud. Her plea deal led to eight of the counts being dropped.

Court records indicate that in her position, Soito had access to money raised through Saint Al’s annual Festival of Trees holiday event. Beginning in January 2005, she kept checks for Saint Al’s instead of depositing them in proper accounts. She later deposited some of the checks into a bank account used to reimburse vendors, but from that account, she wrote checks to herself and deposited them in a personal account.

Soito also used checks that she kept to conceal her theft from 2014 through 2018, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release. And she used similar methods with other accounts to embezzle additional funds from 2014-19.

Soito’s case was investigated by the FBI and the Boise Police Department.