Federal Embezzlement Lawyer

Are you looking for a federal embezzlement lawyer?

At StechLaw Criminal Defense, we have nearly 15 years of experience guiding clients through federal embezzlement charges.

If an internal audit at your workplace has been handed to federal investigators, the accounting work has already been done by someone who was not working for you. Embezzlement cases arrive with numbers attached, and those numbers rarely stay the same once anyone examines how they were built. Our federal embezzlement lawyer defends people accused of taking money they were trusted to handle. Much of that work happens after guilt is no longer the live question. Call our office to schedule a consultation.

Federal Embezzlement Lawyer

A federal embezzlement attorney defends charges alleging that someone converted funds or property lawfully in their possession. The distinction from ordinary theft is possession. The money was already in the defendant’s hands, placed there by an employer, a client, a benefit plan, or a government program, which is why these cases rest on documents rather than on eyewitnesses.

The federal system supervised 119,532 people after conviction as of September 30, 2025, according to the judiciary’s Judicial Business 2025 report, and 107,565 of them were serving supervised release following a prison term. That second figure describes where most embezzlement defendants eventually find themselves. Criminal defendant filings rose 13 percent to 79,129 the same year.

Types of Federal Embezzlement Cases We Handle

Federal jurisdiction attaches when the money belonged to a federally regulated institution, a federal program, or a plan governed by federal law. Our federal embezzlement attorney handles the matters below.

• Financial institution embezzlement. Tellers, loan officers, and branch managers face federal charges when funds move improperly at a federally insured bank or credit union. Internal loss-prevention units build the initial file, and what they decide happened travels to investigators without anyone testing it first.
• Bank fraud. Prosecutors frequently charge bank fraud alongside embezzlement where an account was manipulated or documents were falsified to conceal a shortfall. The two counts cover overlapping conduct and carry different proof requirements.
• Theft of government property. Federal employees, contractors, and grant recipients face charges over funds, equipment, and property under federal control. Poor recordkeeping and genuine authorization disputes account for a meaningful share of these cases. We look for the approval that was given verbally and never written down, which is a common pattern in agencies and small contracting operations alike. Federal theft charges carry thresholds that determine whether the offense is a felony.
• Employee benefit plan and union fund theft. Plan administrators and union officers handling retirement or welfare funds operate under federal fiduciary rules, and the government treats deviations from those rules as criminal when the money went to personal use. Commingling and delayed contributions are the usual triggers, and both can arise from an organization under financial strain rather than from anyone taking anything.
• Program fraud involving federal grant funds. Nonprofits, school districts, and municipalities receiving federal money face scrutiny over how those funds were spent. Allocation decisions made without documentation look different in hindsight than they did at the time.
• Wire fraud. Electronic transfers between accounts give prosecutors a count for each movement of money, which is how a single course of conduct becomes a thirty-count indictment.
• Mail fraud. Mailed checks, statements, and reimbursement forms support parallel counts where the funds moved on paper.
• Money laundering. Spending or transferring the money afterward can support separate charges carrying penalties beyond the underlying offense.
• Federal conspiracy. Conspiracy counts reach bookkeepers, spouses, and colleagues who processed transactions without designing anything.

Why Choose StechLaw Criminal Defense as my Federal Embezzlement Lawyer?

Loss, Restitution, and What Happens at Sentencing

In most embezzlement prosecutions the government has the records, and the fight is over what they show. The loss figure the court adopts drives the guideline range further than any other variable, and the government’s opening number is almost always the largest defensible reading of the evidence. Reducing it is substantive defense work. It means separating unauthorized transactions from disputed ones, removing amounts already repaid, challenging extrapolation across periods the records do not cover, and identifying money the government has counted twice.

Restitution follows the same figure and outlasts the sentence. A client who accepts an inflated loss number to resolve a case quickly carries that obligation for years afterward. We treat the calculation as a contested issue from the beginning rather than something to address once a plea is entered. Judgments in these cases follow people into employment applications, credit decisions, and wage garnishment long after supervision ends, so the difference between two figures is not academic.

A Trial Lawyer for Cases Decided by Numbers

Ben Stechschulte has tried more than 60 cases to verdict over nearly 15 years. That record matters in a document-driven case because the willingness to litigate a loss figure at a contested hearing, in front of a judge, changes what the government will agree to beforehand. He holds board certification in criminal trial law, earned his law degree at Stetson in Gulfport, and was recognized by Super Lawyers as a Rising Star in 2015. Embezzlement matters connect to our wider work as a federal fraud defense lawyer, because the accompanying counts come from the fraud statutes.

Understanding Federal Embezzlement Cases

What Are Important Aspects of a Federal Embezzlement Case?

The defining feature of these prosecutions is that the evidence was created by the client’s own workplace. Payroll systems, expense platforms, and accounting software generate the record, and an employer assembles it into a narrative before any agent gets involved. That narrative arrives at the government already organized, which gives it an authority it has not yet earned. Testing how the employer reached its figure is often the most productive early work available.

Three further points shape the early strategy.

• Authorization is frequently the real dispute. Informal practices, verbal approvals, and loose reimbursement policies produce transactions that look unauthorized years later when nobody remembers granting permission.
• Repayment before charges carries weight but must be handled carefully, since restitution and an admission are not the same thing and should not be treated as though they were.
• Civil suits from the employer often run alongside the criminal matter, and testimony given in one becomes available in the other.

What Is The Federal Embezzlement Case Timeline?

These cases move from private discovery to federal charges over a long period.

• Internal audit or loss-prevention review, usually conducted without telling the employee what it concerns
• Termination and referral, sometimes accompanied by a demand for repayment
• Federal investigation, including bank record subpoenas and interviews with coworkers. Pretrial services becomes involved once charges are filed
• Charging decision, which can come well after the conduct ended depending on the applicable statute of limitations
• Resolution and sentencing, where the loss figure and restitution are litigated in detail

Charges, Penalties, and Defense Strategies for Federal Embezzlement Cases

The elements are narrower than the volume of paperwork suggests, and each one offers a place to work.

• Entrustment. The government must show the property was lawfully in your possession through a position of trust. Contractors and outside vendors do not always occupy that position.
• Conversion. Using funds in a way the owner did not authorize. Where policies were unwritten or inconsistently applied, this element weakens considerably.
• Intent. Borrowing with intent to repay is not the same as converting, though the government treats them identically until someone makes the distinction. Related scheme to defraud counts carry their own intent requirements.
• Amount. The figure attributed to the conduct, which determines the guideline range and the restitution order.
• Mitigation. Most embezzlement defendants have no criminal history, which opens arguments for a downward departure or variance. Acceptance of responsibility and good time credits also affect the time actually served.

What Should You Bring to Your Federal Embezzlement Consultation?

The documents matter more here than the account of what happened.

• Any correspondence from a federal agency, along with termination letters or demands from your employer
• Employment agreements, expense policies, and any written authorization covering the transactions at issue
• The employer’s audit findings or accounting summary, if you were given one
• Bank and credit card records for the period under review
• Records of any repayment you have already made

We will work through the employer’s numbers with you and identify where they can be challenged. That assessment is more useful than reassurance.

Federal Sentencing and Corrections Resources

The agencies handling these matters after conviction publish material clients rarely see beforehand.

• Presentence investigations, explaining how probation officers prepare the report a judge relies on at sentencing
• Post-conviction supervision from the federal judiciary, covering what supervised release actually involves
• First Step Act materials from the Bureau of Prisons on time credits and release into community custody
• Congressional overview of the same legislation and how it changed federal sentence calculation

Reach Out to StechLaw Criminal Defense to Schedule a Consultation

Clients often reach us after termination and before any charge, holding an accounting summary they have not been able to check. That document is where the work starts. We offer a free initial consultation and will go through the figures with you rather than talking in generalities. Contact us to arrange a time.