A 55-year-old Phelps woman was sentenced on Friday in federal court on wire fraud charges.
Karen Owens, 55, who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from her Seneca Falls employer will have to pay a little more than $600,000 and spend two years in prison.
Owens was the finance director for Finger Lakes Conveyors for 14 years. In that capacity, she wrote checks for legitimate business expenses.
Between 2011 and 2017 prosecutors said Owens wrote approximately 400 checks, which were payable to herself. There were another 160 checks payable to another bank for credit card accounts belonging to her.
In total, the checks were valued at more than $750,000.
The attorney representing Finger Lakes Conveyors President Mike Gelder told the Finger Lakes Times that justice was served in this case. “Judge Geraci made sure that justice is being served by sending defendant Owens to prison, because prison is where she belongs after her years of lies and deception,” Laura Myers, the company’s attorney said.
Originally, Owens admitted to stealing roughly $1.4 million. However, the statute of limitations ran out on some of those illegal checks, which dated back to 2004.
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