11 years for woman who embezzled from Addison company
While the Addison company she worked for was going out of business, Jonah Bantug was living in a lavish home and visiting a riverboat casino almost daily.
Her lifestyle was supported by the more than $1.3 million she had embezzled from FastTrak Application Development, which was in turn responsible for the demise of the company itself.
Bantug, who is from Davis Junction, about five miles south of Rockford, was sentenced to 11 years in prison today after pleading guilty in November to felony theft charges. She will receive credit for the nearly nine months she's been jailed in Wheaton.
"Jonah Bantug is definitely the riverboat queen," said prosecutor Helen Kapas Erdman. "When all the cards were laid out, the devastation was insurmountable."
DuPage County Circuit Court Judge George Bakalis said that while her crime caused no physical harm to anyone, he called the damage from the years of embezzlement "quite extensive."
"I don't think she understands or appreciates what happened to other people," Bakalis said. "She used the company as her own private bank."
More than 100 employees were laid off with little to no severance, testified the company's former vice president Amy Rodgers, whose family owned the company.
Addison police Detective Scott Sullivan testified that while her employer struggled to pay bills, the 43-year-old mother of two was taking cruises, vacations to Las Vegas and the Philippines, visiting the Grand Victoria casino in Elgin almost daily. She lived in a house that featured televisions in almost every room.
Photographs prosecutors submitted as evidence showed Bantug's refrigerator and master bathroom sink, which had been outfitted with flat-screen TVs.
Years of bilking the company came to a head in September 2006 when another employee noticed odd charges on one of the company's gas cards. Further investigation uncovered a series of checks cashed by Bantug where she had forged Rodgers' signature.
Sullivan testified that from 2004 to 2006 Bantug had forged 287 checks totaling more than $1.1 million. Another 82 forged checks totaling more than $150,000 were discovered in a subsidiary company account, Sullivan said.
When confronted, Bantug told investigators she had a gambling problem. Sullivan said her "player's card" at the Elgin casino indicated she had gambled away more than $250,000 during her trips to the casino. She also told investigators she lavished gifts on relatives, bought jewelry and gave $500 to $1,000 a month to a nephew to help pay for college.
Sullivan said it wasn't a hard case to crack.
"This was a very obvious, easy to follow crime once light was shined onto the accounts," he said. "She didn't use fake names or anything."
By the time her crimes were discovered, investigators were able to freeze the assets in nearly a dozen bank accounts she kept. Only about $20,000 remained. Bakalis ordered the money to be repaid to the company.