Cheryl Womack mounts a defense that the government obtained evidence against her illegally

Brandy Wheeler sneaked into the empty headquarters of VCW Holding Co. on November 21, 2007. She brought along her brother, Brandon Wheeler, because he was handy with computers.

Together, the Wheelers copied a voluminous cache of financial files from computers belonging to VCW, which leases office space at 11020 Northwest Ambassador Drive near Kansas City International Airport. VCW is run by Mission Hills millionaire Cheryl Womack, a native of Kansas City, Kansas, who made a fortune by starting and later selling an insurance brokerage for the trucking industry.

Two weeks earlier, Brandy Wheeler had suddenly resigned from VCW, where she had been a comptroller for nearly eight years. Wheeler could no longer shake the feeling that her co-workers were catching on to the fact that she was embezzling from the company.

On that November night, Wheeler is suspected of stealing more than 150,000 documents from the company’s servers to cover up her misdeeds. However, she later testified that she “didn’t look at it [the files]” and “could care less about those files.”

VCW didn’t catch on to Wheeler’s embezzlement until early 2008. And once the company figured out Wheeler’s scheme, it reported her to federal authorities, who leveled charges against her for stealing more than $1 million.

Even though Wheeler claimed that those files weren’t important to her, they were. She handed them over to federal investigators as a sign of cooperation — and to lighten the sentence that she would receive after pleading guilty August 7, 2008, to bank fraud.

Wheeler told federal authorities that the files would show that Womack had concocted some type of tax-evasion scheme. The trade worked out well for Wheeler, who received a one-year prison sentence and a restitution order that required her to make monthly payments of $150 to Womack. At that rate, it would take 550 years to repay Womack in full.

A year later, forensic electronics experts started digging through the files Wheeler had provided to the government, which led to a 2013 indictment of Womack on charges of obstructing an investigation — not tax evasion.

The federal indictment reads as though the government believed Womack had used a maze of offshore bank accounts and business entities, which she held in the Cayman Islands, to evade business and income taxes on things such as pricey wine auctions.

To Womack’s attorneys, the document dig represents a constitutional violation, the seizing and inspection of Womack’s personal property without her permission or a search warrant.

In late February, Womack’s attorneys began an attempt to persuade a federal judge to throw out any evidence that the feds had obtained from Wheeler. A judge’s decision on that question is no small matter; 93 percent of the government’s evidence against Womack came from Wheeler.

Federal prosecutors in Kansas City have yet to respond to Womack’s latest filings, and they declined to comment about them to The Pitch.

Ordinarily, a defendant’s privacy doesn’t apply to property stolen by a private individual.

The question in Womack’s case is to what extent government investigators were involved in searching stolen property without a search warrant, and whether that triggers protection for Womack against illegal search and seizure.

A ruling in Womack’s favor could spell trouble for the case against her — a case in which Womack appeared ready to strike a plea deal a year ago.