CLINTON TWP — A former employee is accused of stealing nearly $700,000 from Cygnus Manufacturing Co. by submitting fraudulent invoices.

State police Friday arrested Craig M. Hone 52, of New Kensington, Westmoreland County, on a first-degree felony count of theft by deception.

District Judge Sue Haggerty arraigned Hone and remanded him to the Butler County Prison on $100,000 bail. He posted that same day and was released.

The defendant worked for more than 10 years with the precision machining company, beginning in November 2005 when he was hired as a procurement industry specialist.

During his employment, police said, he was responsible for purchasing, receiving, shipping, inventory management and production scheduling.

In his capacity with the business, according to court documents, he had the “ability to generate purchase orders, receive inventory from purchase orders and perform the receipt of inventory into the system and perform inventory adjustments within the system to write-off inventory items.”

Investigators said that while employed with Cygnus he allegedly submitted bogus invoices to the company between June 2009 and July 2016.

Specifically, police said, he created a vendor, “Tailored World Travel Co., within the company’s computer system that generated 206 “fraudulent invoices for products that were never legitimately ordered and received by Cygnus Manufacturing.”

TWT Co. was a “personal company” that Hone started, said Trooper Michael Pickard, who led the police investigation. The company, however, provided no goods or services, and police could find no record of it.

The alleged scheme led to Cygnus issuing 127 checks, totaling $683,768.30, that the defendant received through TWT.

The suspected fraud was not discovered until October 2016 when Cygnus conducted an “internal analysis” of financial records. Company officials notified police on Oct. 21.

Pickard in December contacted the U.S. Post Office in Sarver and learned that Hone was the owner of a post office box in the name of TWT.

A day later, Pickard on Dec. 9 obtained a search warrant to examine bank accounts for TWT and Hone at First National Bank.

During that phase of the investigation, documents said, it was uncovered that Hone was using First Commonwealth Bank “For personal and TWT transactions.”

Statements from both banks turned up copies of checks issued by Cygnus to TWT.

Online court records did not indicate if Hone has an attorney. He could not be reached for comment this morning.

Pickard said the defendant, who was picked up on an arrest warrant Friday, made a statement to investigators but he would not elaborate.

Hone apparently did not say where the money went. Police are still investigating its whereabouts.

It did not appear, however, that he was living an extravagant lifestyle.

“There was no indication he was spending money on luxury items,” Pickard said of the defendant.

Hone’s preliminary hearing is tentatively set for Wednesday.