MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – A former employee of a northwest Miami-Dade real estate business is facing nearly 20 felony charges after police said he stole more than a half-million dollars from the company.
George Alexander Wheeler, 55, of Stuart, is accused of using the funds to pay off credit card debts and making direct payments to his own bank accounts.
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He was booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center Monday afternoon after first being arrested in Martin County.
According to Miami-Dade police, Wheeler was a controller at CPF Investment Group, a company listed in Florida business records as inactive, but registered to an address at a business park west of Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport.
According to an arrest warrant, Wheeler worked as a freelance employee and billed the company through his firm, Kingfisher Consulting LLC. Investigators said his duties “consisted of paying his own payroll directly as a 1099 employee” as well as paying for CPF’s and its owner’s personal expenses, while entering the expenses into bookkeeping software.
Authorities said Wheeler stole $519,502 from the company before its owner discovered the fraud in December 2023, after American Express corporate security contacted the owner, leading the owner to fire him and file a police report.
Police said more than $370,000 of the stolen funds went to pay off credit card accounts, while he took about $150,000 in unauthorized payments into his own bank accounts.
They said he also improperly raised his own pay by $1,800 per month, though they noted in the warrant that he is not facing charges for doing so.
Authorities said an accountant looking over the company’s QuickBooks entries due to an unrelated tax audit discovered that Wheeler made multiple entries miscoded as “owners draw,” falsely indicating that the payments benefited CPF’s owner when they actually went to accounts controlled by Wheeler.
Police said he also made multiple blank entries in an attempt to conceal his actions.
Wheeler faces a first-degree felony count of organized scheme to defraud, two first-degree grand theft charges, a second-degree felony charge of offense against intellectual property and 15 third-degree felony charges of making false entries on books of corporations.
As of late Tuesday morning, he remained in TGK on a $112,500 bond, according to online records.