Denita N. Hill hit upon a simple scheme to defraud the City of Baltimore.

From her position as an accountant at the Finance Department’s payroll services bureau, she reissued “lost” employee checks to a friend, who then forged their names and deposited the checks into his own account.

What made the scheme possible, according to investigators, was that Hill was responsible for both documenting the “lost” checks and having the checks reissued without any apparent supervision.

The arrangement netted Hill and her accomplice, Robert Johnson of Perry Hall, about $75,000 before Johnson’s bank uncovered the suspicious transactions and notified city officials.

So what happened? The scheme continued undetected, according to investigators, because the Finance Department assigned Hill to look into the matter.

She did her best to derail the investigation until the bank itself returned the ill-gotten deposits to the city – and the conspiracy was unraveled by city and federal agents.

Sentenced to Prison

Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge George L. Russell III sentenced Hill to 42 months in prison. Johnson had already pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year and a day in prison.

The two defendants had faced a maximum of 20 years in jail for wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft.

In a summary sheet, U.S. District Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein described the scheme hatched by Hill, now age 27, and Johnson, 34, as follows:

“Hill identified individuals who had received and cashed large lump sum payments and then requested that such checks be reissued, as if they had not been received. These duplicate checks would be printed in a location accessible to Hill, who then delivered the checks to Johnson. The duplicate checks bore a forged endorsement, ‘Pay to the Order of Robert Johnson,’ purportedly signed by the recipient. Johnson endorsed and cashed the checks, and deposited the proceeds into a bank account he controlled.”

In an attempt to conceal her actions, Hill told agents from the Baltimore Inspector General’s Office that she had spoken with the check recipients and that the endorsements were genuine. Both assertions were untrue, Rosenstein said.

Hill and Johnson, who worked at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, undertook the conspiracy in July and August 2013.

Hill was hired by the Finance Department in 2010 and was paid $46,000 a year, according to on-line records.