A bookkeeper for two southern Missouri firms has been charged with embezzling more than a quarter million dollars from her former employers.

The federal prosecutor in Kansas City accuses 45-year-old Diana Kay Erickson of Aurora with stealing more than $200,000 from Superior Lifts and more than $34,000 from Goolsby Rental Properties. Erickson kept the books for both companies. Superior Lifts has since gone out of business. Prosecutors allege that Erickson forged checks from the companies and deposited them in her personal account and also re-routed checks from customers into her personal account, a scheme they say began about four years ago and ended in early 2008.