CUMMING — In the culmination of a six-month investigation, a 50-year-old Cumming resident faces several felony charges in connection with the theft of nearly $2 million from a Roswell-based technology firm.
According to the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office, Steven E. Daniel has been charged with three counts each of felony theft and felony forgery, as well as two counts of financial identity fraud.
Daniel was arrested Feb. 14 and remains at the Forsyth County Detention Center, where his bond has been set at $2.2 million.
According to the sheriff’s office, the investigation began when Nanoventions filed an incident report involving Daniel, its former chief financial officer.
“We’ve been investigating Steven Daniel for about six months,” said Robin Regan, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office. “The company brought it to our detectives’ attention that he [may have] stolen about $160,000 with forged checks.”
Over the following months, sheriff’s investigators worked with the president and chief executive officer of the company, examining some five years of business and financial records to determine the full extent of Daniel’s activity.
They determined Daniel had completed more than 290 fraudulent transactions involving the firm’s financial accounts since 2010 resulting in the theft of more than $1.95 million.
“Once that investigation began, they went through a very lengthy process of going through all the financial records for the company,” Regan said. “They did determine that close to $2,000,000 was taken over a few years.”
According to its website, Nanoventions is a nanotechnology firm specializing in industrial optical films and document and product security technologies “to prevent counterfeiting of currency, driver's licenses, event and transit tickets.”
Company officials were unable to be reached for comment on Monday morning.
Though based in Fulton County, the firm does a good deal of business locally, Regan said, and Daniel is a Forsyth County resident.
According to the sheriff’s office, the investigation is ongoing as authorities look into other people and crimes with which Daniel may have been involved.
“We’re currently looking in to whether there are any other suspects,” Regan said. “I don’t have any other information on that at the time.”