CFO of Clearwater business laundered $2.4 million, police say

A Valrico man used his position as chief financial officer of a Clearwater business to steal $2.4 million over the course of three years, according to investigators.An investigation found the CFO was funneling money between companies in other parts of Florida and Georgia, records show. Employees at the other ventures told detectives they had no idea the man had employment elsewhere.Jeffery Crane’s actions were a “deeply personal betrayal,” said Andrew Latimer, CEO of Bluewater Media, a Clearwater-based marketing agency that houses one of the largest studio spaces in Tampa Bay.Crane is facing four felony counts of financial crimes, including money laundering. He was arrested Feb. 5 and released the following day with bond set at $150,000.Pinellas-Pasco prosecutors filed formal charges Tuesday and an arraignment is scheduled in March. Crane has not entered a plea and no lawyer is listed for him in records.Attempts by the Tampa Bay Times to reach Crane for comment were unsuccessful.Crane, 47, was hired as Bluewater’s CFO in 2022 by an employee who had known him since childhood, Latimer said. Crane covered up his theft by editing expense reports, an arrest affidavit states. That shielded him from suspicion until Latimer’s wife — who previously served as a company producer — felt something was off, he said.Latimer reported Crane to the Largo Police Department in August after a standard accounting review revealed Crane had been stealing from the company, according to the affidavit.“Each leaf you looked under, there was something else,” Latimer said. “He didn’t hurt a company; he hurt real hardworking people.”Suspicions began when a Bluewater employee was contacted by Valley Bank regarding questionable charges made to her company credit card. When the account was reviewed, investigators found Crane had been using the card to finance a lavish lifestyle, including spending on high-end restaurants, hotels, flights, limousine services and adult entertainment establishments, according to the affidavit.Crane also transferred $1,275,120 from the Bluewater JP Morgan account to an American Express account in the name of another company where he served as CFO, according to the affidavit.The CEO of an Atlanta-based company, Selig Enterprises, told investigators that she was unaware Crane had been stealing from the company, the affidavit states. Crane was the CFO of AAA Parking, which is a subsidiary of Selig Enterprises, investigators said.“After discovering financial impropriety involving corporate credit card fraud in fall of 2025, AAA Parking took swift action and terminated his employment,” the company said in an emailed statement. Largo police Detective Lance Wagoner, who investigated the case, told the Times that law enforcement in Atlanta also is investigating Crane.In addition to embezzling $823,366 from the Valley Bank credit card between 2022 and 2025, Crane made a series of transfers to funnel money between bank accounts, according to the affidavit.Crane fraudulently transferred $300,000 from the Bluewater account to a Fifth Third Bank account in the name of J. Kreel LLC in December 2024, according to the affidavit.J. Kreel LLC was registered as a business by the Florida Department of State in 2022. Crane is the authorized member of the LLC.Crane also transferred $110,000 to another Fifth Third account in the name of Gasparilla Pizza LLC. That account is also owned by Crane, according to the affidavit.Gasparilla Pizzeria & Growlers is a mom-and-pop restaurant in Valrico.“He went into that business with childhood friends and used it to launder money and left them with nothing,” Wagoner said. “They didn’t know until the end that those accounts were barren.”But because Crane is the pizzeria CEO, he can’t be held criminally liable for draining the bank accounts since they were in his name, Wagoner said.Wagoner said it’s common for suspects in economic crimes to register for multiple LLCs and pay a fee to be listed as CEO, which gives them the ability to cash checks in the company’s name.Florida does not perform criminal or credit background checks on people forming an LLC. It takes two to five business days for the state to approve an LLC application, according to the Florida Incorporation Service. Records show five company employees on the LLC filing for Gasparilla Pizzeria, including three with Valrico addresses, one with a Maine address, and a woman named Shannon Crane who lives in Georgia.Latimer said Shannon Crane is Jeffery Crane’s wife.Crane asked Bluewater to hire his wife to assist him with his accounting work in 2022, Latimer said. Latimer said the company fired her in April.Shannon Crane’s LinkedIn account says that she has been an executive assistant at Bluewater since October 2022 and that she is also the owner and chief brand officer of Gasparilla Pizzeria.Jeffery Crane admitted to his fraudulent activity on August 18, when he told his colleagues that he had a “$10,000 a day narcotics habit” which was “part of the reason he began to steal,” according to the affidavit. Latimer said Crane disclosed that it was a cocaine addiction.Crane also told them he was employed as the CFO of the Atlanta company and had been stealing from them for years. He told them he tried to cover up stealing from that company with the million-dollar transfer from Bluewater’s JP Morgan account to Selig’s American Express account, the affidavit states.He was then fired and escorted out of the building.The next day, Crane illegally accessed a Vystar Credit Union account that was owned by Latimer and transferred $19,100 to a man who Bluewater employees knew was “an associate” of Crane, the affidavit states.Bluewater employees didn’t notice the transfers because Crane manipulated the accruals data for weekly cashflow reports, according to the affidavit.Wagoner said that in cases like this, there’s always a paper trail.Investigators searched Crane’s two Selig-issued laptops and found emailed receipts and website access information that corroborated his fraudulent spending, according to the affidavit.“You have to step back and go; How did I miss this? How did I not see it?” Latimer said. “He was very strategic about the way he hid it. As he got further down the line of his addictions, he got sloppy.”Bluewater was a company concept Latimer and his wife started building at their dining room table 25 years ago. Latimer said the worst part of Crane’s actions is the trust he took away from hard-working people.“The biggest thing he stole was trust,” Latimer said. “It takes time to get that back and that’s the greater crime of it all.”

CFO of Clearwater business laundered $2.4 million, police say

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CFO of Clearwater business laundered $2.4 million, police say

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