Ex-Customs Chief Gets 2-Year Term
A former U.S. Customs supervisor was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $5,000 Monday for embezzling nearly $840,000 in duties collected from passengers arriving at Los Angeles International Airport.
U.S. District Judge Robert Kelleher, who imposed the sentence, said Betty J. Jones engaged in an “extraordinary, protracted, sizeable” scheme to swindle the government.
Jones, 38, of Los Angeles, was convicted April 5 of 21 counts of embezzlement and one count of failing to pay income tax on funds she stole in 1986 and 1987.
Evidence during the two-day, non-jury trial showed that she spent the money on clothes and trips for herself and her friends.
Until she was fired in September, 1987, Jones was responsible for collecting cash and checks from an airport vault, verifying cashiers’ accounting records and having the money deposited into a Customs bank account. Prosecutors said that she sometimes kept the cash and altered paper work to make it appear that less cash had been collected. In other cases, she destroyed all the paper work, kept the cash and discarded the checks.
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