Orange County embezzler Rocco Romeo has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for diverting nearly $900,000 from a New Jersey law firm.
Romeo, 44 of Washingtonville, had pleaded guilty to money laundering and wire fraud.
He embezzled funds from Budd Larner PC of Short Hills, New Jersey, from 2015 through 2018, while he was chief technology officer. He set up shell companies, opened banking and payment accounts for the phony companies, issued invoices for services that were never performed, approved the invoices and paid the bills with a company credit card.
Romeo”™s attorney, Michael P. Rubas, recommended probation, home confinement, community service and restitution.
He described his client”™s history of abusing opiates to treat pain and depression from serious accidents and the pressures of his job.
“Although he lived his whole life as an honest, hardworking man,” Rubas stated in a sentencing memorandum, he became transformed through his drug dependence to a point where he felt entitled to be paid for all that he gave of himself to the firm. He was in a dark place and used much of the money he took ”¦ to feed his drug habit.”
Romeo has completed a substance abuse program, and now, according to his attorney, “fully appreciates his wrongful conduct.”
Mathew S. Andrews, an assistant federal prosecutor, recommended up to 51 months in prison.
Romeo abused a position of trust, the prosecutor stated in a sentencing letter, and duped a girlfriend into creating the shell companies. He had a good income and a comfortable life. His former employer, Andrews noted, has gone out of business after more than 80 years of providing legal services.
“This was not a single misguided decision,” he said. “It was deliberate, planned and meticulously executed.”
In addition to two years imprisonment, U.S. District Judge Vincent Briccetti sentenced Romeo on Feb. 5 to three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay $855,630 in restitution. Romeo must surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on March 22.
