Bookkeeper robbed Boulder frozen yogurt shop of $114K, owners say

On Feb. 8, a man called Ripple Frozen Yogurt in Boulder with a strange message.

He told the self-serve dessert shop that he had noticed unusual money transfers from Ripple to the bank account that he shares with his ex-wife, a woman named Aiesha Teague. There had been unexplained deposits of $2,750, $2,900 and $4,500, this man claimed.

Teague’s name was not foreign to Jamie Gardner and David Humphrey, Ripple’s owners. She had been the company’s bookkeeper since 2012 and had access to its bank account.

That single phone call in February led to a startling revelation: Teague had steadily been stealing from Ripple for 10 years — nearly the entire time that its single store in a nondescript strip mall at 1682 30th St. had been open — according to Ripple’s owners.

“At this time, Ms. Teague will not be making any statements,” her defense attorney, Claire Elster with the Elster Law Office in Westminster, told BusinessDen.

On her LinkedIn page, Teague claims that she is a member of the “Colorado Association of CPAs” but no such group exists. Alicia Gelinas, CEO of the similarly named Colorado Society of CPAs, said no one with Teague’s name belongs to her group. Likewise, there is not a licensed accountant with that name or Teague’s maiden name in a state database.

When Gardner called the Boulder Police Department to report Teague’s alleged theft on Feb. 11, she believed Teague had taken $25,000 over three years, according to police files obtained by BusinessDen in a records request. After more research, she called back Feb. 15 to say the loss was closer to $40,000. By Feb. 22, she saw it was north of $65,000.

Gardner and Humphrey now believe that Teague pilfered $114,425 by writing nearly 200 company checks to herself and her company, and by transferring Ripple money to herself electronically. The first check was written in May 2012, the month after she was hired, and the last in August 2022. She was legitimately paid $38,415 for bookkeeping in that time.

In February of this year, after Ripple fired Teague, a lawyer for Teague called Gardner and said that his client was willing to pay $20,000 in restitution, according to Boulder Police records. Gardner turned down the offer and hired her own lawyer instead.

Teague’s attorney, David Moorhead, next emailed Boulder Police Det. Taylor Hickam.

“We would be interested in investigating community diversion with upfront restitution if the victims were amenable to that,” Moorhead wrote, according to Hickam’s notes.

“It would certainly get them repaid more quickly,” he said of Gardner and Humphrey.

Teague upped her offer to $70,000 and Gardner told Hickam that if Teague paid the money, she would ask that Teague not be charged with a crime. Gardner withheld documents from police to use as bargaining chips during the restitution talks, according to Hickam’s notes. Those talks fell through.

In April, Hickam went to JP Morgan Chase and obtained bank records for Teague and her accounting company, Impact Services. The detective then asked Elster, a second Teague lawyer, for an interview with Teague on May 2 and was told she would not be talking. On May 15, Hickam told Elster that a judge had signed a judge.

Teague, 39, turned herself in at the Boulder County Jail on the morning of May 30. She was booked and charged with three felonies: theft, forgery and identity theft.