SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Kami Elois Power, 55, of Gardnerville, Nevada, was sentenced today in federal court to 12 years and five months in prison for fraud and identity theft in a scheme to defraud a South Lake Tahoe construction company out of more than $1.4 million.
In November 2025, following a six-day trial, a federal jury found Power guilty on 17 counts – 11 counts of wire fraud, three counts of bank fraud, and three counts of aggravated identity theft. As part of her sentence, Power is required to pay restitution to the victim of more than $1.4 million and forfeit two houses and the horse that she bought with the stolen money.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Power served as an office manager and controller at a family-owned construction company in South Lake Tahoe between November 2019 and May 2023. During her employment, Power embezzled more than $1.4 million from the company. She disguised more than $700,000 of these fraudulent transfers as payments made to vendors that the company worked with—under fake profiles she created in the names of real companies, as well as fake companies that reflected her own initials, such as “KEP Inc. Sale” and “KPI.” She disguised additional fraudulent transfers as payroll payments or reimbursements. Power also used the company’s credit card to make unauthorized personal purchases, paid down the balance of her own personal credit cards, and used the signature of the owner of the company to write several fraudulent checks. Power used the money she stole to purchase two houses, several new cars and ATVs, and a horse. She also spent the money on field-level seats at football games and a $29,000 Hawaiian vacation.
The name of the company has not been released publicly. The construction industry is highly susceptible to embezzlement and fraud, consistently ranking among the top industries for occupational fraud, with median losses reaching $250,000 per case in 2024. According to Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, they were in the top four last year to be hit by fraud, behind banking, manufacturing and healthcare.
This was Power’s fifth time embezzling from an employer; prior embezzlements resulted in two criminal convictions, a civil lawsuit, and a probation violation. When arrested for the most recent embezzlement case, she was serving a prison term of up to three years after admitting to being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm in Douglas County, Nev.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office, and the South Lake Tahoe Police Department conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Elliot Wong and Dhruv Sharma prosecuted the case. The judge today was U.S. District Judge Dena M. Coggins.