A former Armonk businessman has been sentenced to prison for two years for embezzling nearly $3.5 million from his family’s business.
U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Román also ordered John Hickey, 36, to pay restitution to the family business. He was sentenced on May 22 in White Plains federal court and the judgment was docketed on July 14.
“John Hickey knew it was wrong to steal from his company,” defense attorney Gary A. Farrell stated in a sentencing recommendation to the judge. “However, the gambling disorder he suffered from made it virtually impossible for him to stop stealing.”
Hickey was employed by the Tapis Corporation, a manufacturer of flame retardant fabrics, in Armonk. He began working for the family’s business part-time when he was still in college and graduate school. Immediately after graduation in 2012 he was named director of quality assurance. In 2018 he became the comptroller of some of the company’s affiliates.
But for 70 months from 2018 through 2023, he embezzled $3,461,293. He used the money to gamble on sports events, attend concerts, buy New York Knicks and New York Rangers season tickets, and pay for home repairs and vacations and jewelry and clothing.
In October 2024 he was arraigned on a fraud charge and he pleaded guilty.
His defense attorney urged the court to “impose the most lenient sentence it can, consistent with the law and the unique factors surrounding John Hickey’s life.”
Farrell argued that Hickey suffered from diminished mental capacity caused by a gambling disorder. He began gambling at family gatherings when he was in elementary school. By high school he was betting with bookies.
In 2016 he began attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings and stopped gambling for about a year. When he resumed gambling he lied that he had stopped gambling and was still attending GA meetings.
From 2018 through 2023 his compulsion to gamble was all-consuming, Farrell stated, to the point where he would even gamble online as he drove home from work.
Farrell claims that Hickey has undergone “extraordinary rehabilitation.” After the company discovered the embezzlement, he attended several weeks of in-patient and out-patient mental health treatment and went back to Gamblers Anonymous meetings.
“There is no way to minimize the negative impact of John Hickey’s actions,” Farrell stated, “as they betrayed the trust that his aunt, the CEO of Tapis Corporation, placed in him when she named him comptroller.”
Now Hickey is stable, Farrell says. His gambling disorder is in remission. And every day he makes sure it remain in remission.
Assistant prosecutor James McMahon says Hickey has no cognitive deficiency that would warrant leniency. He recommended a sentence within non-mandatory guidelines that called for 41 to 51 months in prison.
Hickey stole money from the family business more than 400 times over a 70-month period.
The scheme was complex: He created false invoices; forged an executive’s signature, used another employee’s log-in credential to enter fake invoices into the accounting system; printed checks payable to himself; changed the name of the payee in the accounting system; and rubber stamped the check signature in the name of another employee.
While a substantial portion of the embezzled funds was used for gambling, it was greed, McMahon says, not gambling that was the motive.
Hickey knew he had a gambling problem before he began stealing. Ten years ago, his parents bailed him out of a $60,000 gambling debt. He attended Gamblers Anonymous meetings but stopped and lied to his family about gambling and treatment.
Hickey knew what to do during the entire 70-month embezzlement spree but did not attend any Gamblers Anonymous meetings, McMahon said. But as soon he was caught, he went to GA meetings and sought inpatient treatments.
Hickey abused his family’s trust, McMahon says. He was handed a lucrative and secure career, including an ownership interest in the business. His aunt promoted him while not giving the same career opportunity to her own children. Now the once close family is divided.
“Neither the family nor the business will likely ever again be as they were,” McMahon stated.
Judge Román ordered Hickey to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on Aug. 4.
