PORTLAND, Maine — A New Hampshire woman was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court to two years in federal prison for stealing more than $1 million from two businesses where she worked as a bookkeeper.
Janis F. Woods, 65, of Conway, New Hampshire, was sentenced to 26 months behind bars to be followed by three years of supervised release, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
In addition to prison time, U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby ordered Woods to pay more than $1.135 million in restitution to Grover Gundrilling, Inc. of Norway, Maine; VM Foods of Conway, New Hampshire; and the Internal Revenue Service.
Woods paid about $100,000 toward restitution before being sentenced, Assistant U.S. Attorney Halsey Frank, who prosecuted the case, said Friday. He also said Woods spent most of the embezzled money on her son’s pizza business in Conway, New Hampshire.
Her thefts were discovered at the Norway business in 2012, when the firm was in the process of recapitalizing through a private equity group, according to court documents. Woods’ fraud at VM Foods, which owns seasonal restaurant Vito Marcello’s Italian Bistro, was detected when the attorney for Grover Gundrilling noticed suspicious checks from VM going through Woods’ personal bank account.
Information about Woods’ motive for the theft or how she spent the money is not included in court documents.
Woods pleaded guilty in October to one count of interstate transportation of stolen checks and one count of tax evasion.
She used her position as bookkeeper for the businesses to issue herself unauthorized checks, according to the prosecution version of events to which she pleaded guilty. Between January 2009 and January 2012, Woods admitted writing 169 unauthorized checks to herself totaling about $742,081 on Grover Gundrilling’s business account. Between about 2007 and about 2009, Woods wrote unauthorized checks drawn on VM Foods’ account, payable to herself, totaling $220,456, according to court documents
The total tax due and owed as a result of Woods’ unreported income from Grover Gundrilling and VM Foods is $283,977, the U.S. attorney’s office Monday said in a press release.
“In pronouncing sentence, Judge Hornby observed that while Woods’ serious medical needs and her lack of criminal history called for leniency, her offense was serious because it lasted almost five years and inflicted over $1 million worth of loss on her victims,” the press release said.
Woods faced up to 10 years in prison on the transportation of stolen checks charge and up to five years on the tax evasion charge. She faced a fine of up to $250,000 on each charge.
Information on whether Woods began serving her sentencing immediately or was given a date to report to a federal prison was not available Friday morning on the court system’s electronic case filing system. She had been free on $20,000 unsecured bond.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service.
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