By Ted Clifford and Hannah Wade
The State
(TNS)
The bookkeeper of a popular local restaurant that’s been closed for months was found guilty of stealing more than $300,000 from her employer.
On Nov. 5, a jury in federal court convicted Melodie Turner—the bookkeeper for All In Restaurant Group, which owns the restaurants Boku and Publico in Columbia, SC—of one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering. Her conviction comes in the middle of an ongoing lawsuit between Michael Duganier, owner of All In Restaurant Group, and the family of his deceased business partner.
Defending himself in the lawsuit, Duganier blamed some of the company’s financial woes on years of theft by Turner, who was responsible for All In’s bills and invoices. From 2022 to 2024, Turner stole $318,528 by writing herself hundreds of small checks from the company’s bank account, which she concealed among other expenses, according to the indictment.
Duganier told The State it’d take “winning the lottery or a miracle” for him to reopen Boku, a pan-Asian restaurant in the Vista, that’s been closed since July. He initially opened the restaurant at 916 Gervais St. in February 2022. When he closed the restaurant in July, he said on social media that it was “to work on a few things [and] revamp our menu.”
But the closure came after Turner, who was the parent company’s in-house accountant, was found to have been stealing from the company, according to supporting documents in a lawsuit against Duganier and an indictment in federal court.
Duganier told The State he’d hired Turner to help him oversee and grow the restaurant group. When the restaurant’s holiday pop-up rolled around in late 2023, Duganier said business had been great.
“We had a really good Christmas season that year and I didn’t understand why I was [needing] to pull out more loans, like … how’d the money go so fast? I couldn’t figure it out,” Duganier said. He said he started digging and eventually traced it to Turner.
Turner was convicted following a two-day trial in federal court prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney T. DeWayne Pearson. It took the jury roughly an hour to deliver a guilty verdict.
Turner, who did not testify, argued that she had approval to write the checks and that many were reimbursements for purchases she had made on behalf of her employer.
Turner’s attorney, Benjamin Stitely, said they were unable to comment as she had not yet been sentenced. Sentencing in federal court typically takes place two to three months after trial.
Publico lawsuit divides local restaurant empire
The guilty verdict comes amid a years-long lawsuit between Duganier and the family of Robert “Bob” McCarthy, his business partner who died in Nov. 2021.
After McCarthy’s death, his sister, Patricia Kennedy, brought a lawsuit against Duganier and his businesses—both locations of Publico in Columbia and Boku—alleging that Duganier had kept her in the dark about the financial status of the various businesses after McCarthy’s death.
The initial complaint, filed in Richland County court in July 2022, accused Duganier of closing the Atlanta location of Publico without notifying or compensating Kennedy, McCarthy’s sole heir.
The indictment of Turner, filed March 18, 2025, in South Carolina District Court, did not name Duganier, but an answer from Duganier in his lawsuit with Kennedy noted the case against Turner and acknowledged Turner was the bookkeeper at Boku from January 2022 until May 2024.
In legal filings, Kennedy asked Duganier to admit that he’d had access to the restaurant’s financial documents and that he had “primary control over the financial operations” during Turner’s employment. Duganier, through his attorney, didn’t object to the requests, but called them vague and objected on the grounds that the information was not relevant.
“I know the truth,” Duganier told The State. “Could you imagine someone stealing from you, and you know about it and you go along with it? Like, what?”
Photo credit: WheninColumbia.com
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©2025 The State. Visit thestate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
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