The former chief financial officer of a Chicago-area company’s subsidiary has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for embezzling more than $1 million.
Tina Feuerstein served as the CFO of York Wallcoverings, a Pennsylvania company that was owned by a company in the Chicago area.
Shortly after she was hired in 2016, Ms Feuerstein began using a company credit card to purchase personal items, including luxury furniture, designer apparel, and everyday expenses.
Over the next five years, Ms Feuerstein falsified entries in the company’s ledgers and deleted items in its expense-reporting system to hide more than 3,800 credit card charges totalling more than $1 million.
Before working at York Wallcoverings, Ms Feuerstein embezzled more than $200,000 while working in another company’s accounting department.
Earlier this year, a jury in the Northern District of Illinois convicted Ms Feuerstein, 54, of Hanover, Pa., on eight counts of wire fraud.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge LaShonda Hunt sentenced Ms Feuerstein to three years in federal prison and ordered her to pay $1,090,020 in restitution.
The sentence was announced by Andrew Boutros, United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Ryan Whalen, special agent-in-charge of the Chicago field office of the FBI.
“Defendant lied and stole for years from her employer,” assistant U.S. attorneys Jared Hasten and Anne Yonover argued in the government’s sentencing memorandum. “The public needs to know that there will be serious consequences when professionals, like defendant, commit crimes such as embezzlement.”