Embezzlement of this magnitude is tough to hide, and hiding it was a full-time job she apparently was good at. It looks like she possessed enough consistent cognitive organization to pull it off without raising concerns, meaning she held the rest of her life together enough to not have people suspect. I've spent a lot of time with people in various stages of mania. Out of control shopping, gambling, drinking, lack of impulse control, etc. goes hand in hand with mania, but mania is a cluster of symptoms that are pretty obvious to people that know an individual well, even when mild, and although not inconceivable no one suspected something was wrong, it would have been much more difficult to sustaina multi-year period without other areas of her life going equally out of control. Apparently, it was an AMEX employee that busted her, not someone who knew her. I wonder how many people close to her are going to say they were surprised. I also don't think it was greed alone, as the shopping (warehouse room of clothing with tags still on) was just too nutso, and definitely a sign of addictive behavior. If it were just an episode or two, I'd say she was just sick, but the amount of dedicated effort needed to sustain her theft makes it just plain criminal, even if she suffers from clinical disorders.