The former supervisor of six Panera Bread stores who once stole $2.6 million in a Texas invoice scheme admitted Wednesday that she stole $200,000 in a similar fraud against Panera.
Deane Petzel of Connellsville, former area director for a Panera franchisee and an admitted gambling addict, pleaded guilty in federal court in Pittsburgh to wire fraud.
Petzel, 55, who is already in federal prison for the Texas case, had been under indictment here since the summer.
As an area supervisor, she had access to Panera’s invoice system and authority to approve third-party invoices of less than $1,000 without anyone else’s approval.
From January 2020 to June 2021, she created fake invoices from a company she created that she called Buzzz Services. She told Panera that Buzzz was a site maintenance operation for the stores and had liability insurance, both of which were lies.
With Buzzz approved as a vendor, Petzel submitted bogus invoices for plumbing, electrical and other work. The company’s operations director never knew because all of the invoices were for less than $1,000.
In all, she stole more than $200,000 that way.
Petzel had been prosecuted federally in Dallas in 2020 for a larger invoice scheme targeting her employer there, Ampex Brands, a franchising company for 400 Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell and other fast-food outlets.
For eight years starting in 2011, Petzel submitted nearly 1,000 fake invoice checks under $500 in the name of a bogus company she invented called Business Jobs.
Just as in the Panera case, she knew any invoices over a certain limit would trigger an approval request from someone else, so she stayed under that amount. When Ampex lowered its approval level from $500 to $250, she started submitting bogus invoices under that new level.
Ampex at one point even asked Petzel in 2019 what Business Jobs was, and she lied that she didn’t know.
“She’s a thief,” the prosecutor said in that case. “She lies.”
After Ampex canned her, she collected another 47 checks based on fake invoices and also supplied false information in a 2019 bankruptcy case. She stole $2.6 million in total. A judge ordered her to pay that money back and serve 45 months in federal prison.
Petzel said in court in Dallas that she has a history of uncontrollable gambling.
A month after she pleaded guilty in the Dallas case, the FBI said she gambled at Live! Casino Pittsburgh in Westmoreland County. She lied there, too. She told casino officials that she was a lawyer who owned 90 Pizza Huts and 30 Dunkin’ Donuts stores.
In the Pittsburgh case, U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon said she would sentence Petzel in May.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
