Posted Tuesday, April 10, 2012 --- 3:10 p.m.
From the Department of Justice:
Madison, Wis. - John W. Vaudreuil, United States Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin, announced that Joyce Weise, 63, Madison, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge William Conley to one year and one day in jail for conversion of government retirement funds.
Weise pleaded guilty to this charge on January 26, 2012.
Between September 1995 and November 2009, Ms. Weise kept and then spent retirement pension funds that were for her mother, Ann Weise, who had passed away on September 20, 1995.
In March 2011, during the course of a routine audit, the Retirement Inspection Branch of the Office of Personnel Management noticed that retirement benefits were still being disbursed to Ann Weise. Her social security number was cross-checked with Social Security records and showed that Ann Weise died in 1995.
At sentencing, Chief Judge Conley noted that the defendant's conduct resulted in a loss to the government of $131,878.21 and thus called for a prison term to deter others from attempting the same scheme in the future.
Weise was also ordered to pay restitution to the United States of the total amount she stole.
The charges against the defendant were the result of an investigation conducted by Office of the Inspector General, Office of Personnel Management and the U.S. Secret Service. The prosecution of the case has been handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul W. Connell.
