Accountant Is Sentenced for Embezzlement at Tustin Firm : Crime: Joseph Gornick gets 32 months in prison for stealing $1.4 million from a tool and die maker over 4-year period.

SANTA ANA —  The former chief accountant of a Tustin tool and die maker was sentenced Friday by an Orange County Superior Court judge to 32 months in prison for embezzling $1.4 million over a four-year period.

Judge Myron S. Brown sentenced Joseph Gornick, 43, to two years and eight months in a state prison for writing Dynacast Co. checks to a phony firm and then depositing them in a bank account he controlled. The scheme lasted from April, 1986, to February, 1990, when Gornick was fired.

Paul D’Aquanni, Dynacast’s general manager, said Gornick’s embezzlement has caused his firm “tremendous business problems.”

Besides losing money, the company discovered that its business plans--including profit schedules--were all inflated as part of Gornick’s cover-up.

“He was the accounting manager, and we all had a lot of confidence he was doing the right thing for us,” D’Aquanni said.

The Orange County district attorney’s office said that nearly all of the embezzled money is gone. Gornick either gambled it away or lost it investing in other ventures that failed, including a company chartering boats and submarines for scuba divers, prosecutors said.

Gornick surrendered his assets, including a condominium, two cars and his retirement accounts, but investigators said the total worth of those holdings was less than $50,000.

“Unlike some crooks who steal to support their families or even a drug habit, Joseph Gornick stole to invest for his future,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Guy Ormes.

Julian W. Bailey, Gornick’s attorney, said his client had intended to pay the company back.

“He took more to try and pay back the hole he had dug for himself,” Bailey said. “The hole became deeper and deeper until it consumed him.”

Gornick had checks issued to a fictitious company called Semco. The phony company’s name was very similar to that of Dynacast’s primary vendor, Semco Enterprises. The checks, ranging in value from $5,397 to $45,000, were deposited into a bank account Gornick controlled.

“The secretive techniques and the manipulation of Dynacast’s books to hide the thefts all indicate planning, sophistication and professionalism,” Ormes said.