Isha Yumakia Warr embezzlement ended with a three-year federal prison sentence after prosecutors said the 53-year-old Columbia woman stole $253,855.48 from a Lexington County business. Warr was sentenced for wire fraud and will serve three years of court-ordered supervision after prison.
Isha Yumakia Warr
Warr worked as a bookkeeper from June 2023 to July 2024, a role that put her inside the business’s payment process. Prosecutors said she persuaded the company to switch to new accounting software, then used that system to pay herself instead of paying company invoices.
A routine financial review later found $253,855.48 in unauthorized transfers from the business account into Warr’s personal account. That discovery turned a bookkeeping job into a federal fraud case and produced the prison term, restitution order, and special assessment.
Lexington County
The sentence requires Warr to pay back the full $253,855.48, along with a $100 special assessment. The restitution order gives the business a formal court judgment for the stolen amount, while the special assessment adds a separate financial penalty.
The case centers on a small business in Lexington County, but the business was not named. That leaves the affected employer with a money loss that was measured, documented, and then converted into a federal sentence.
Columbia, S.C.
Warr, who lived in Columbia, was 53 when sentenced. Her case shows how a trusted accounting role can be used to redirect payments without changing the company’s invoices themselves, because the software change let her route money to her own account.
For the business, the practical result is a prison term for Warr, an order to repay the loss, and three years of supervision after release. The unanswered detail is which small business in Lexington County was affected, even as the amount taken and the sentence are now fixed.
