SOUTH BEND - A former Wawasee School Board member and Zimmer employee will begin a 15-month sentence in federal prison April 17.Brian David Dawes, 49, Leesburg, was sentenced to 15 months in prison in the U.S. District Court in South Bend Feb. 28 after pleading guilty to mail fraud.
Dawes served on the Wawasee School Board from January 1998 to January 2006 and was employed at Zimmer until June 17, 2005.
According to court documents, Dawes attempted to use his position as Zimmer's director of E-commerce to embezzle funds from the company.
Dawes' duties included dealing with purchase orders submitted electronically.
Dawes and another individual, not named in the court documents, created a company called Brite Engineering LLC out of Texas. The purpose of the company was to provide data cleansing or translating services.
Beginning in December 2003, invoices from Brite Engineering were submitted to Zimmer for payment.
The invoices would go to Dawes, who approved each invoice, which was then sent to Zimmer's accounting office.
Dawes and his unnamed partner then opened a bank account on behalf of Brite Engineering in February 2004 at an Austin, Texas, bank.
The payments from Zimmer sent to Brite Engineering then were put into the bank account in Texas.
Court documents show that Zimmer paid Brite Engineering on 17 different occasion totaling more than $70,000.
A portion of that money was withdrawn in checks made payable to Dawes.
Documents show that Dawes failed to disclose to Zimmer that he and his partner created Brite Engineering.
Dawes also will face three years probation, will have to repay $70,903 to Zimmer and pay a $4,000 fine.
