A Big Lake man who scammed his employer for nearly $6 million was sentenced to five years and three months in prison Tuesday, and he can possibly blame some of the time on the fact he lied when he told Rosenbaum he had a master of business administration degree.
A perturbed Rosenbaum sentenced Chad Wilfred Jurgens, 39, and ordered him to pay $6.3 million in restitution. But before sentencing Jurgens, the judge lit into him for the "bald faced lie" he'd earlier told the judge about having an MBA and said the deception indicated Jurgens wasn't accepting responsibility for his crime.
"It's another load of the same junk he's been shoving at everyone else. That's a legal term," Rosenbaum said of Jurgens.
Jurgens, a married father of two, meekly tried to explain to the judge why he'd lied.
"Because you didn't know the difference between truth and lying," Rosenbaum thundered.
The defendant went on to explain that he lied to the judge about having an MBA because he had lied to his pandora outlet wife about it for pandora sale years and he wasn't ready to pandora jewelry 70% off clearance tell her the truth. He tried buying love with gifts, Tamburino said.
"There was no excuse for his behavior," he acknowledged. "Basically, he has no self worth."
"A great deal of wealth, however," Rosenbaum said.
A few minutes later, Rosenbaum said Jurgens' upbringing rough or not was no excuse for bad behavior.
"The world isn't fair," the judge said. You didn't just steal. You stole a fortune."
In February, federal prosecutors charged Jurgens with one count of wire fraud. The government claimed that from 2002 until March 2008, he embezzled about $5.7 million from his employer, Haas TCM.
Manufacturers hire Haas to manage their purchasing, use and disposal of chemicals. Jurgens was Haas' on site manager at Seagate Technologies' semiconductor plant in the Twin Cities. Services Inc. Services sent an invoice.
But the scheme moved only money, not chemicals. Services was a company Jurgens asked a friend to set up; it existed only on paper and on Jurgens' computer. The friend, who apparently knew nothing of the scam, would take a cut of the money, then pay the rest to a company called Spence Manufacturing Inc., which Jurgens had set up himself.
"Basically, he found a river of money and he was able to siphon off a bit of it for himself," Rosenbaum said.
The judge has given Jurgens a dressing down before, largely over the defendant's honesty or lack of it.
Jurgens originally planned to plead guilty March 8. Rosenbaum asked him routine questions to establish that he had a clear head and knew what he pandora sale was doing. But when the judge asked Jurgens if he'd smoked marijuana within the past 24 hours, Jurgens admitted he had.
For that bit of honesty, Rosenbaum abruptly adjourned the hearing, saying he couldn't take Jurgens' plea until his mind was clear. When court reconvened April 6, the judge expressed skepticism over Jurgens' loose accounting of where all the money went.
"You got any million dollar cars?" he asked him.
When Jurgens replied that he'd bought a Lincoln Navigator, the judge told him that accounted for only about $60,000, and "You could buy 100 Navigators."
Jurgens explained he bought cars, personal watercraft and jewelry and started businesses. He also bought property and built a home; the $1.1 million home he and his wife built in Big Lake was foreclosed on last year, and the government sought forfeiture on Jurgens' $448,100 home on Bertha Lake in Crow Wing County.
The wire fraud statute carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. But under federal sentencing guidelines, Jurgens faced a maximum sentence of five years and three months, and a minimum of four years and three months.
One factor considered in figuring out that range was Jurgens' acceptance of responsibility. Rosenbaum indicated he believed Jurgens had shirked some of that responsibility by lying about his educational background, a lie the defendant wrote off as "a mishap."