UPDATED: Figure in Capital Management case sentenced to five years

The last in a series of theft and fraud prosecutions alleging that more than $12 million was taken from a Morgan City business came to an apparent end Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Maurice S. Hicks Jr. sentenced Karen Duhon, 67, of Berwick to 60 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised probation. As part of the plea agreement, Duhon is required to repay nearly $3.4 million

The sentencing was Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Lafayette.

Duhon pleaded guilty in August to one count of mail fraud, one of the counts in a 2018 indictment.

According to court records, Duhon worked from 1973 to 2014 as a bookkeeper for Capital Management, in which Peter Guarisco had a controlling interest until his death in 2005. Ownership passed to his five children.

The indictment said that in January 1999, Duhon began writing checks to herself for more than her salary. She had them signed by a named signatory for Capital Management. Earlier court cases identified the signatory as James Scott Tucker.

Duhon also falsified the company’s books to conceal the fact that she wrote the checks, the indictment said.

Duhon deposited the money into accounts owned by her and her husband. In all, the checks totaled about $3.2 million.

Also, the indictment said, Tucker and Duhon sometimes helped the Guarisco heirs with their personal finances. Between November 2012 and January 2014, Duhon had access to checks on an account belonging to one of the heirs.
Duhon used the account to pay $127,920 on her American Express cards, the indictment said, and in December 2013, she mailed a check for about $8,700 to American Express.

That was the allegation on which the mail fraud count was based.

Duhon was originally indicted in December 2018 on one count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, and one count of mail fraud.

Duhon’s husband, Armond Duhon, was sentenced in 2017 to 20 years in prison after his conviction in 16th Judicial District Court, a state court, on more than 200 theft counts in relation to the Capital Management fraud case.

Donnasue Peveto, Tucker’s assistant, pleaded guilty in the 16th JDC in 2015 to 123 theft counts in cases alleging more than $9 million was illegally taken from Capital Management.

Tucker died in 2014. Peveto died in 2016.

Guarisco’s heirs took Tucker’s estate to court to recover the missing money in a lawsuit that was settled in 2017.

Marwan Mohey-El-Dien has acted a spokesman for the Guarisco heirs since news of the case began appearing in 2014.

“In our opinion as the victims,” he said, “justice was delayed. Justice was served. …

“Under the normal course, with her age and health issues, it was a fair sentence.”

That sentence was higher than the federal sentencing guidelines recommended, Mohey-El-Dien said.

“The judge thought that she showed no remorse,” he said.

At sentencing, “she did apologize to the Guariscos, but it was not heartfelt,” he said.

If Duhon had helped the Guarisco heirs recover the lost money, the family would have tried to help her, he said.

“We gave Karen many opportunities to help us,” he said.

Instead, she fought a lawsuit filed by the family, which was settled in 2017, and filed a defamation suit. The family spent $2 million in legal fees, Mohey-El-Dien said.

The case against Duhon was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney T. Forrest Phillips.