Danbury Hospital's former chief financial officer was sentenced to 33 months in prison Monday for embezzling more than $200,000 from the hospital and from another in Ohio where he previously worked.
William Roe, 55, was accused of stealing about $170,000 by instructing the hospitals to write checks to a phony computer software company he had created called Cycle Software Solutions. The hospitals received nothing for their money.
Federal authorities said the false billing scheme cost Danbury Hospital $95,000 and St. Rita's Hospital in Lima, Ohio, $75,000.
Roe also was charged with swindling an additional $46,000 from Danbury Hospital by inflating the value of a house he owned in Ohio at the time Danbury Hospital financed his move to Connecticut to begin work there..
Roe began working as CFO in Danbury in 2009 and left in August 2010, when he was arrested. He held the same position at St. Rita's.
Prosecution documents filed in court show he earned more than $300,000 a year in Ohio and was given a $259,000-a-year salary increase to move to Danbury.
Prosecutors used the salary figures to argue that U.S. District Judge Vanessa L. Bryant, sitting in Hartford, should sentence Roe to 33 months, which is at the top of the applicable sentencing range under federal court guidelines.
"Plainly, Roe's moral compass was askew, and his conduct in stealing money not for need but for what can only be interpreted as sport is deserving of a sentence at or near the top of the agreed-upon guidelines range," prosecutors argued.
According to court filings, Roe told a federal probation officer that he began stealing because he didn't think he was making as much as he should at St. Rita's, and his family was under a financial strain because he owned two houses.
Roe was arrested after employees in Danbury discovered irregularities in Roe's payment authorizations for computer software services.
Among other things, the payments bypassed the hospital's purchase order system and had not been reviewed by the information technology department.
When confronted by the FBI, Roe referred the agents to a former high school classmate who he said ran the software company. Federal prosecutors said the former classmate had no role in the scheme and had seen Roe once since high school.
In reality, federal authorities said Roe registered a computer business in Pennsylvania, but the business provided no goods or services. Prosecutors said Roe used his positions with the hospitals to issue checks to his company. He then drove the checks to Pennsylvania and deposited them in an account he had opened for the phony company.
Roe previously pleaded guilty to a single charge of fraud. Bryant ordered him to repay the hospitals when he gets out of prison.
