Embezzlement victim picks odd repayment

Judith Ann Scheitheir was a bookkeeper at C.J. Krantz topsoil company. To avoid a seven year jail sentence for stealing $350,000 she had to agree to an unusual restitution arrangement that her former employer wants.

Her former boss Timothy Krantz, took out a $250,000 life insurance policy on her life. Scheitheir will have to make the $400.00 a month payment on the policy to stay out of jail. Scheitheir's husband is in poor health and another condition for her to stay out of jail was that she had to make Krantz the sole beneficiary on the $125,000 life insurance policy on her husband. "The insurance arrangement is “probably the best chance we have [for] recovering anything she stole,” Timothy Krantz, owner of the 67-year-old C.J. Krantz topsoil company, said after the sentencing. Scheitheir who admitted that she had a gambling problem began writing checks to herself in 2003. She wrote them to cover her credit card debt and the losses from her gambling at casinos in Niagara Falls and Niagara Falls, Ont., according to court papers. She was placed on probation for five years and must go to counseling for her gambling addiction according to State Supreme Court Justice Penny M. Wolfgang. She must try to find a job so she can make the payments on the policy. She will have a difficult time getting a job with her criminal record. "Scheitheir and her husband are “basically destitute,” Joseph M. La- Tona, her attorney, told the judge. They currently are living off her husband’s disability pension." Wolfgang told Scheitheir she is legally responsible to make the payment and her sentence is not a slap on the wrist Scheitheir has an accounting degree from Buffalo State College.