FORT WAYNE – Gregory Lutz, 49 years old, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Chief Judge Theresa L. Springmann after pleading guilty to wire fraud, announced U.S. Attorney Kirsch.

Lutz was sentenced to 33 months in prison.  As part of the sentence, the court, in addition to entering a money judgement in the amount of the proceeds from the scheme ($585,652.740, also ordered restitution to the two victims). 

According to documents in the case, between Sept 2016 and May 2018, defendant, employed as controller of a local company, embezzled funds from the company’s bank accounts which he used to wire payments to his debts on his personal credit cards.  He concealed his conduct from the employer by whiting out the wire transactions in the company’s bank records and recorded the payments in the company’s books as payment to one of the company’s largest vendor but the numbers were significantly out of sequence and in reality, were never printed signed nor cashed.  The amount of the “checks” matched the amount of company funds the defendant used to pay his credit cards each month.          

This investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Indiana Financial Crimes Task Force with the assistance of the Indiana State Police.  The case was prosecuted by Assistant U. S. Attorney Tina Nommay.

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