06-06-2025
Florida man sentenced to over four years for embezzling $5.8M from employer
BOSTON (WWLP) – A Florida man who served as a finance director has been sentenced to more than four years in federal prison for embezzling over $5.8 million from his employer, prosecutors announced Thursday.
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Paul Schnitzer, 52, of Clermont, Fla., was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Boston to 54 months in prison and three years of supervised release.
Schnitzer was also ordered to pay $5,831,829 in restitution and forfeit assets he acquired through his scheme, including the balances of two financial accounts, subscription ownership shares in certain artwork, and up to $50,000 in cash held with luxury jeweler Bulgari.
Federal prosecutors said Schnitzer carried out the fraud between January 2022 and May 2024 while working as the finance director of a Florida-based company owned by a Massachusetts investment firm. Over that period, he made more than 100 unauthorized transfers from the company's operating account into his personal bank account. Many of the transfers were falsely labeled as 'equity distributions,' according to court documents.
To conceal the theft, Schnitzer used a company line of credit to replace stolen funds and further siphon money into his own account. Prosecutors said he also submitted falsified financial reports showing inflated cash balances to the company's owners and went so far as to spoof email addresses, posing as representatives from the company's bank and customers to mislead auditors.
Schnitzer was initially released while awaiting trial, but was arrested again in June 2024 after he removed his court-ordered location monitoring device. He was later found to have used a company credit card to make more than $10,000 in unauthorized purchases in August 2024.
Schnitzer pleaded guilty in the case earlier this year.
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