Former Big Red Box IT manager sentenced to 4 years

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A former IT manager of a South Carolina-based national dumpster brokerage firm has been sentenced to more than four years in federal prison after pleading guilty to embezzling more than $1 million from the company.

William Tye Grisel, 40, embezzled the money from Big Red Box from 2014 to 2017, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Peter McCoy Jr.’s office. Evidence showed Grisel created a fictitious search optimization engine company to which he siphoned $1,049,996. With the false SEO company failing to generate customer leads, Big Red Box suffered revenue losses and laid off employees while Grisel spent money on trips, cars and an airplane, according to McCoy’s office.

“The defendant’s lies and fabrications bilked his employer out of more than $1 million and caused substantial damage to this small company doing business here in South Carolina,” McCoy said in the release. “As the Defendant’s prison sentence shows, this office takes these types of crimes seriously. We will always stand up to protect victims here in South Carolina, whether they are individuals or businesses.”

U.S. District Judge Joe Anderson sentenced Grisel to 51 months in federal prison, followed by three years of court-ordered supervision. Grisel was also ordered to pay $1,050,000 in restitution to Big Red Box. 

Headquartered in Columbia, Big Red Box provides dumpster rentals for homeowners and businesses in Charleston, Rock Hill, Greenville, Spartanburg, Myrtle Beach and Florence, as well as Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro, N.C. and Augusta, Ga