Downstate bank exec gets 63 months in prison

EAST ST. LOUIS — A federal judge has sentenced a former Jersey State Bank executive to more than five years in prison for stealing more than $4.5 million from the bank where she’d worked since 1976.

U.S. District Judge Michael Reagan sentenced 57-year-old Susan Becker in East St. Louis on Tuesday. She’d pleaded guilty to bank fraud.

Defense attorney Richard Sindel says Becker has a shopping addiction and would frequently buy items and give them away.

Becker wept as she told the judge she has low self-esteem and had tried to buy friendship.

In handing down the 63-month sentence, the judge noted that Becker acquired two condos in the Ozarks, a 38-foot boat, motorcycles and expensive cars with the stolen money. He called it “the largest internal embezzlement fraud” he’s seen as a judge.