Woman embezzles from bank to pay shopping bills
A woman has been sentenced to prison for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from a southwestern Minnesota bank where she had worked in a scheme that drained more than $1 million from the institution, the Star Tribune reports.
Barbara Kaye Rechtzigel, 48, of Belview, Minn., is slated to begin her two-year prison term on Feb. 4 in Waseca, Minn., the newspaper reports.
Prosecutors said Rechtzigel from 1998 to June 2012 as a manager at Minnwest Bank in Belview, siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars from CD accounts of customers. They say she used the money to pay off shopping debts.
A U.S. Attorney's Office press release says that Rechtzigel created false paperwork to make bank customers believe their CDs were being renewed and earning interest. Actually, she was stealing and spending the money.
