An accountant for a Boca Raton management company that oversees funds for about 40 homeowners associations was arrested Monday for embezzling $185,000 over the past 10 months, police said.

Todd Demartine, already on probation for stealing from a previous employer and for vehicular manslaughter, faces a new grand theft charge after his boss, Paul Patti, president of Hawkeye Management, went to police March 11.
According to an arrest report, that was the day Patti got a call from the president of the Planters Point Homeowners Association, west of Boca Raton, that its SunTrust Bank account was overdrawn by $30,000. Patti audited the account and reported finding 26 unauthorized ATM-card withdrawals in November that totaled more than $16,000. No ATM card was authorized on the account, the arrest report says.

Patti began to suspect his 31-year-old accountant, Demartine, when he noticed that the withdrawals were being made in cities where Demartine either lived or used to live, including West Palm Beach and Wellington, the report says.

Patti told police his suspicions and, with an officer listening in, called Demartine and confronted him, the report says.

Unaware that police were on the line, Demartine started crying and confessed, the report says. He "needed the money to pay his probation fees," it says.

In 1993, he was found guilty of killing a passenger in his car after crashing into a lamppost while driving drunk. Six years later, he was convicted of a payroll scam and was sentenced to five years in prison.

"I'll do anything not to go back to jail," Demartine pleaded with Patti that night on the phone, police said. "I'll sell my house if I have to."

But the next day he was headed to the Police Department to explain his actions. Demartine told police when the Planters Point account got low he would siphon money from other accounts by convincing the associations they needed to transfer funds into the Hawkeye Management account to pay bills, the report said.

Once they did, he would call the bank and have the money put into the Planters Point account, which was the only account he stole from, police said.

That was March 16. Officer Jeff Kelly said Demartine was given until Monday to turn himself in.

Neither Planters Point Homeowners Association President Charles Samberg nor Patti could be reached for comment.