MIAMI – A bookkeeper suspected of defrauding South Florida companies out of $10 million was arrested as she was about to board a one-way flight to Israel, according to a federal criminal complaint.
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Hava Yfrah-Austin, 58, of Hallandale Beach, was taken into custody on Tuesday, jail records show.
Authorities said she was caught at Miami International Airport as she tried to fly to Tel Aviv on an Israeli passport.
According to the complaint, Yfrah-Austin ran a company called Accounting Solutions Today, PA, registered to an address in Plantation, and did bookkeeping for two unidentified Miami-Dade-based companies from 2001 until she was fired in April 2024.
She’s accused of stealing the $10 million from “at least” 2018 to 2024.
The fraud was discovered after one of the owners reviewed an account “and noticed many transactions that he did not recognize as legitimate,” a special agent with Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation said.
According to the complaint, she first admitted to stealing $170,000. She then admitted to stealing $3 million after the owners found more fraud, authorities said.
The complaint states she used fake vendor names to transfer funds between the first company and the second company — and then to her Accounting Solutions Today account.
Authorities said in December, eight months after being fired, she sold her Florida properties.
They said agents learned Sunday that she had booked the Tel Aviv flight and confronted her at MIA Tuesday, where she “admitted, among other things, that she was an Israeli citizen and that she did not have a return ticket to the U.S.”
Yfrah-Austin was taken up to Broward County, where she was being held in the North Broward Bureau jail facility in Pompano Beach as of Wednesday morning.
She’s facing a wire fraud charge in Miami federal court. If convicted, she could spend two decades in prison.