LOS ANGELES
A federal judge sentenced a former administrator of a Los Angeles law firm to five years in prison for embezzling more than $3.3 million from her employer, officials said today.
U.S. District Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell also ordered Esterlina Santos, 53, who resides in the Ladera Heights district of Los Angeles to pay $3.3 million in restitution to her former employer and $781,109 to the Internal Revenue Service.
Santos pleaded guilty in June to one count of mail fraud and one count of subscribing to a false tax return, officials said.
According to court documents, from 2004 to August 2010, Santos fraudulently obtained approximately $3.3 million from the Law Offices of Robert Smylie and Associates.
While serving as the firm administrator for Smylie and Associates, Santos used QuickBooks software to generate checks from Smylie and Associates’ operating account to pay for expenses for her personal credit accounts, including those associated with American Express, Bank of America and Capital One.
After Santos generated checks from Smylie Associates’ operating account and mailed them to pay her personal credit accounts, she used QuickBooks to alter the checks to falsely reflect that they were paid to Smylie Associates’ vendors for services purportedly provided.
When she pleaded guilty, Santos admitted that she received $2.4 million of income she failed to report to the IRS during the 2007 through 2010 tax years.
Santos was ordered to begin serving her sentence on Jan. 4.
The FBI and IRS investigated Santos.