FREEHOLD – The former manager of the Asbury Lanes bowling alley and concert venue, Larry Dembrun has been charged with bilking the company out of over $400,000.
A Monmouth County Grand Jury handed up an Indictment against a former employee of an Asbury Park hotel charging him with theft of over $400,000 from the business between 2018 and 2020, announced Acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Lori Linskey.
Larry Dembrun, 41, of Montclair, was indicted on one count of second degree theft. He was previously arrested on September 22, 2020, by members of the Asbury Park Police Department and the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office following an investigation. Dembrun was charged with theft of over $400,000.00 while working as a general manager of the Asbury Hotel, Asbury Lanes, and the Asbury Ocean Club, all located in Asbury Park. He was subsequently terminated from his position when the theft was discovered during a routine audit.
The Asbury Park Police Department was initially contacted by hotel executives on June 27, 2020 after they discovered that Dembrun had written numerous checks to pay a personal credit card bill, and had also issued unauthorized checks to himself and to other members of the hotel staff. Following a thorough review of the operating and payroll accounts for the hotel, and an examination of Dembrun’s personal bank accounts, the investigators determined that between January of 2018 and June of 2020, he stole over $486,000.00 from the company. In addition to using company funds to pay his personal credit card bill and to make unauthorized disbursements to other hotel employees, Dembrun also withdrew cash from the operating account which he deposited into his personal account, and failed to deposit cash receipts collected at the hotel’s entertainment venue, retaining them for his own personal use.
If convicted of second degree theft, Dembrun faces up to ten years in prison.