Czap gets four years for taking $6.1 million from Newark company

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Roberta Czap, age 67, formerly of Newark, was sentenced by Chief U. S. District Court Judge Leonard P. Stark to four years in prison and three years of supervised release.

 In addition,  Czap will be required to turn over more than $1 million in assets that represent some of  the proceeds obtained from her activities that involved embezzling $6.1 million from a financial services company.

Czap pleaded guilty on June 1 to one count of wire fraud, one count of money laundering, and one count of making false statements on tax returns. 

Beginning in January 2011 and through August 2016, while employed as the Vice President of Accounting at an unnamed   financial services company in Newark, Czap  made 497 separate fraudulent online transactions from the company’s accounts into her personal accounts. 

Prosecutors said Czap disguised these transactions, ranging from $1,000 to $38,527, as payments to corporate health insurance or payments to corporate marketers and altered the company’s general ledger to further conceal the transfers. In total,  Czap obtained more than $6.1 million through her fraud. 

Czap converted these electronic transfers to cash, through either ATM withdrawals or cash advances at several casinos. 

After gambling, often briefly,  she would cash out at the casino and receive  US currency.

Federal law requires that all income, whether obtained legally or illegally be declared on tax returns.  Czap failed to report the proceeds of her fraud on her tax return for years 2013 through 2015.  

Prosecutors said that Between April 2014 and September 2016, her husband made a series of structured cash deposits totaling $1,212,910, in amounts of less than $10,000.  He was previously sentenced to a year and a day of imprisonment for his conduct in a separate criminal action, United States v. Matthew Czap, 17-4-LPS.  

Acting U.S. Attorney David  Weiss stated, “Defendant’s conduct, which the court accurately described as a ‘brazen and long-running fraud’ not only violated the law, but the trust of her employers and colleagues.  She compounded her crimes by laundering the proceeds of her fraud and attempting to conceal the money from the government.  Defendant’s desire to enrich herself at the cost of others represents serious criminal conduct that cannot be overlooked.”

The case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

 

 

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