If you searched John Beal Roofing embezzlement, you are looking for a straight answer, not a slogan. Here it is. Richard D. Zellner, who was the chief financial officer of John Beal Roofing, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in U.S. District Court in St. Louis. U.S. District Judge Matthew T. Schelp sentenced him to 41 months in prison and ordered him to repay the money, about $2,062,051. The theft ran from about January 2019 to January 2024. That is the case. The rest of this page is the public record, then what this company is willing to say in its own voice.
People also search the name. Richard D. Zellner is 66 and lives in O'Fallon, Missouri. At the company he was known as Rick. He is the former CFO. He is not the owner, he is not on a crew, and he is not the person who answers 1-800-564-6232. John Beal Roofing is still the family company that has been here since 1947. The embezzlement is part of the record. It is not the company that shows up to the house.
What the U.S. Attorney's Office reported
The sentencing facts in this section come from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Missouri. The release is titled "Former CFO Sentenced to 41 Months in Prison for Embezzling $2 Million." You can read it yourself: justice.gov/usao-edmo. We are not rewriting it into something softer.
The release says Judge Schelp sentenced the former CFO of a St. Louis County company to 41 months in prison for embezzling $2 million, and ordered him to repay the money. It gives the amount obtained as about $2,062,051. It says Zellner waived grand jury indictment and pleaded guilty in August to one count of wire fraud. The charge to remember is wire fraud. Embezzlement is the word the Justice Department used in the headline for what he did with the money. Both belong on a page that people find by searching John Beal Roofing embezzlement.
One line in that release matters for anyone comparing sources. The Justice Department describes the employer as "a St. Louis County, Missouri company." It does not print the words John Beal Roofing. We are the ones attaching the name. Richard D. Zellner was the chief financial officer of John Beal Roofing. That is the company's statement, not a sentence we are pretending appears in the court press release.
What he did with the money
Between approximately January 2019 and January 2024, Zellner used his employer's bank accounts to pay off the balance of his personal credit cards. The release says he paid that balance off again and again, once he had run up thousands of dollars in charges, typically every few days or every couple of weeks. He also used the company's credit cards for personal expenses. Across the scheme he made more than 1,000 unauthorized transactions. The total the release gives is about $2,062,051.
The money did not stay in a company account under another name. The release says he spent it on vacations, travel, personal bills, and purchases of gold and precious metals. That is the list. We are not adding purchases the release does not name, and we are not leaving off the ones it does.
He hid the theft in the books. The release says he covered it up by altering company accounting records, creating fake work orders and bills. Read that carefully. The public record says the fake work orders and bills were how he concealed the theft inside the company accounting. It does not say those bills were mailed to homeowners as inflated invoices. We will not say that either. If a record does not say a customer was overbilled, this page will not invent it to make the story heavier.
Who investigated it, and who prosecuted it
The FBI investigated. So did the Maryland Heights Police Department. That department is in the same city as our headquarters at 12181 Prichard Farm Road, Maryland Heights, Missouri 63043. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Clow. The plea was in U.S. District Court in St. Louis. Those names are in the release. They are not our commentary.
Zellner pleaded guilty. This was not a case that went to a jury on a denial. He waived indictment and admitted one count of wire fraud. The sentence is 41 months. The repayment order is about $2,062,051. A guilty plea is the defendant agreeing to the charge. It is not John Beal Roofing writing the charge.
What John Beal Roofing is saying, beyond the release
The release stops at the sentence. The company has more to say, and it is not a slogan pasted over the theft.
First, he was ours. Richard D. Zellner was the chief financial officer of John Beal Roofing. When someone types John Beal Roofing embezzlement, they should land on a page that says that in the first paragraph, not on a third-party writeup that still calls the employer "a St. Louis County company."
Second, the company recovered, and it recovered stronger than ever. That is not a line we are borrowing from a press kit. It is what happened after a CFO stole for five years and the people who were not him kept showing up. Crews still went to the houses. The phones still got answered. Jobs still got finished. The brand held because the employees held it. A theft of this size can end a company that is only a name on a truck. John Beal Roofing is a name people in this region already knew, and it is a payroll of people who did not steal the money. The recovery is a testament to both. The brand was strong enough to take the hit. The employees were the reason the hit did not become the end of the company.
Third, safeguards are in place so this does not happen again. After the theft was found, John Beal Roofing updated its internal financial controls and protocols, and those safeguards are there to make sure one person cannot do this again. We are not listing every new step on a public page, and we are not naming a software brand or a dollar limit we have not put in writing here. The point is the promise, not a diagram. One person should not have been able to move company money to personal credit cards for five years. The path that allowed it has been closed. The safeguards are there so it never happens again.
We are not going to tell you the five years did not happen. January 2019 through January 2024 is a long time for a CFO to run unauthorized transactions. More than 1,000 of them is not a single bad check. The scale is the reason the sentence is measured in years, not in a fine and a lecture. The recovery does not erase that. It is what the company did after it.
What this does not change about a roof
A homeowner searching this because they are about to hire a roofer wants to know whether the embezzlement is still sitting in the office that will bill the job, and whether the company came back from it. It did. Stronger than ever. That is the testament: the John Beal Roofing brand held, and the employees are the reason. Zellner is the former CFO. The sentence is a prison sentence and a repayment order. He is not estimating your roof, he is not ordering your shingles, and he is not the name on the workmanship warranty.
John Beal Roofing still does the work it did before this case was public. Residential and commercial roofing, storm-damage repair, gutters, and 24/7 emergency service, from the Maryland Heights headquarters and the other offices listed on this site. The crews on a house are the crews. The embezzlement was a finance-office theft, described by the government as personal spending covered by fake paperwork in the company books. It was not a statement that the roofs were not installed.
If you want the other public record people check before they call, start with the reviews page, the Roof Report, and the job pages that name the city and the materials. If you want a person, call 1-800-564-6232. We will talk about the roof. We will not pretend this case is not on the internet. It is. This page is here so the version you read is the one with the sentence, the dollar figure, and the charge written out.
How to read the dollar figure
You will see two numbers in writeups of this case. The Justice Department headline says $2 million. The body of the release says about $2,062,051. Those are the same theft described two ways: a round figure in the headline, and the figure the prosecutors used for what he obtained. This page uses $2,062,051 when it is being exact, and about $2.1 million when it is speaking plainly. We are not using a larger number. We are not using a smaller one.
Restitution is the order to pay it back. An order is not the same thing as a check that has already cleared. The release says he was ordered to repay the money. It does not publish a payment schedule, and neither does this page. If you need the status of repayment, that is a question for the court record, not a number we are going to guess.
Why this page exists
John Beal Roofing embezzlement is a search a neighbor types after they hear a piece of the story: a CFO, a prison sentence, gold, fake bills. Pieces of a story get repeated wrong. The former CFO becomes "the owner." Wire fraud becomes a rumor that customer checks were stolen. Forty-one months becomes "a slap on the wrist" or "life in prison," depending on who is telling it. The public release is short. This page is the short release, plus the sentence the release left out: the company was John Beal Roofing, and the man was our CFO.
We would rather you read that here than in a comment thread. We would rather the dollar figure you repeat is $2,062,051 than a number someone rounded into a scare. And we would rather you know the company updated its financial controls after it found the theft than wonder whether the same path is still open.
If you are a homeowner in St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, Columbia, the Lake of the Ozarks, Cape Girardeau, Farmington, Carbondale, Paducah, or Indianapolis, the embezzlement case does not change the phone number and it does not change who owns the company. It changes what you are entitled to know before you call. You are entitled to know this. Now you do.
Frequently asked questions
Who embezzled from John Beal Roofing?
Richard D. Zellner, the former chief financial officer. He is 66 and lives in O'Fallon, Missouri. At the company he was known as Rick. The U.S. Attorney's Office release describes him as the former CFO of a St. Louis County company and does not print John Beal Roofing. The company is identifying him here as its former CFO.
What was Richard Zellner sentenced to?
U.S. District Judge Matthew T. Schelp sentenced him to 41 months in prison and ordered him to repay about $2,062,051. He had pleaded guilty in August to one count of wire fraud in U.S. District Court in St. Louis, after waiving grand jury indictment.
How much was taken in the John Beal Roofing embezzlement?
About $2,062,051, across more than 1,000 unauthorized transactions between approximately January 2019 and January 2024. The Justice Department headline rounds that to $2 million. He used company bank accounts to pay his personal credit cards and used company credit cards for personal expenses. The release says the money went to vacations, travel, personal bills, and gold and precious metals.
How did he hide it?
The release says he altered company accounting records by creating fake work orders and bills. That is the cover-up described in the public record. The release does not say those fake bills were sent to homeowners. This page does not add that claim.
Who investigated the case?
The FBI and the Maryland Heights Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Clow prosecuted it.
Did John Beal Roofing recover, and what stops this from happening again?
Yes. The company has recovered stronger than ever. That recovery is a testament to how strong the John Beal Roofing brand is, and to the employees who kept the work going. Safeguards are in place, including updated internal financial controls and protocols, so this never happens again. Zellner is the former CFO. He is not running the company. For a roof, call 1-800-564-6232.