A now-former employee at a Chesterfield, Missouri, testosterone clinic has pleaded guilty to identity theft after sending out rejection letters to job applications and taunting them for their “ghetto names,” all without the knowledge of the company.
According to the Riverfront Times, Christopher Crivolio of St. Louis entered his plea on Tuesday, admitting to sending “unauthorized emails purporting to be from an employee of Mantality Health,” without the company knowing.
The owner had long maintained that it was the former employee who had wrongfully and maliciously used the company’s Indeed.com profile to send out the racist messages, the report notes.
The incident started unfolding last August when several applicants started getting emails. Hermeisha Robinson shared the email she got, which cruelly stated, “Unfortunately we do not consider candidates that have suggestive “ghetto” names.”
“I am very upset because today I received an email about this job that I applied for as a customer service representative at Mantality Health I know I’m well qualified for the position as they seen on my resume!” Robinson wrote back in August. “They discriminated against me because of my name which they considered to be “ghetto” for their company.”
Another applicant, Dorneshia Zachery of St. Louis told KMOV that the email made her feel like “the company looked at my name and said, ‘no, we don’t care about what you’ve done in life.'”
Mantality owner Kevin Meuret told RFT that the fact that the messages were signed with the name and contact information of another employee, turned the already troubling incident into one of identity theft.
Prosecutors noted that the detail also led to that particular employee being targeted and harassed on social media and via phone calls as the one who sent out the racist messages.
“At no point in time had the employee, or anyone at Mantality Health, authorized Crivolio to use the employee’s identity or to send the communications purporting to be on behalf of Mantality Health,” the company noted in a press release.
The FBI in St. Louis invested the case, and Special Agent in Charge Richard Quinn said that Crivolio was doing more than attacking his former coworker, “In this case,” Quinn added, Crivolio intended “to destroy the company’s reputation.”
Crivolio, who is set to be sentenced on Nov. 7, faces up to five years behind bars, as well as a fine of $250,000.
