The Phelps woman who stole more than a million dollars from her Seneca Falls employer over the course of years is getting out of prison way before her two-year sentence concludes.
The Finger Lakes Times reports that Mike Gelder, the president of Finger Lakes Conveyors learned that Karen Owens was released from a federal prison in Connecticut this week.
She had pleaded guilty to wire fraud. “There is no question that Karen Owens being released from prison after serving less than two months for stealing over a million dollars is a miscarriage of justice,” Gelder said in a statement sent by his attorney, Laura Myers.
From 2011 until she was caught- Owens wrote hundreds of checks payable to herself from the company’s bank account. She wrote another 160 checks payable to another bank for credit card accounts owned by her- and her husband.
She was sentenced by a federal judge in January. However, she will be released due to a settlement related to the prison where she was housed.
“My client, Michael Gelder, is obviously distraught that Karen Owens spent less than two months in prison for stealing a million dollars from his business, effectively ruining his family business and devastating him personally,” Gelder’s attorney told the Times.
FingerLakes1.com is the region’s leading all-digital news publication. The company was founded in 1998 and has been keeping residents informed for more than two decades. Have a lead? Send it to [email protected]