Eugene Accountant Sentenced to 8 Years for $642K Employer Theft
An Eugene accountant stole $642K from her employer by forging signatures and writing herself checks for nearly seven years before being sentenced to 8 years in prison.
Melisa Ann Juline Jaragosky spent nearly seven years writing herself checks from her employer's bank account, forging the signatures of company owners and supervisors, and generating fake invoices to cover her tracks. On March 10, a Lane County Circuit Court judge sentenced the 42-year-old to 96 months in prison for stealing over $642,000 from Harvey and Price Co., a Eugene mechanical services contractor where she had worked as an accountant since 2018.
Jaragosky pleaded guilty in December 2025 to 14 counts of aggravated identity theft and seven counts of aggravated first-degree theft. She will also serve two years of post-prison supervision after her release. At the March 10 sentencing hearing, prosecutors argued for 142 months; the defense sought a lesser sentence. The judge imposed 96 months.
Lane County District Attorney Christopher Parosa said Jaragosky began the scheme shortly after Harvey and Price Co. hired her, though the statute of limitations confined formal charges to the period between April 2019 and March 2025 when her actions were discovered. The embezzlement funded the purchase of a home and two cars. She also admitted to detectives that she had given stolen money to family and friends, Parosa said.
Harvey and Price Co. discovered the theft in March 2025. Jaragosky was arrested the following month and indicted by a Lane County grand jury on 35 counts, including aggravated identity theft, first-degree forgery, and aggravated first-degree theft. The December guilty plea resolved 21 of those counts, with the remaining charges disposed of through the plea process.
The case underscores the financial exposure facing small businesses that rely on a single employee to manage accounting functions without independent oversight. Harvey and Price Co., a mechanical contractor serving the Eugene area, had no named representative comment in court records available to date, and no restitution figure has been publicly confirmed in filings reported so far.
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