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Ex-bank manager gets light sentence for theft
Tuesday, December 19, 2000 By Mike Bucsko, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
An Armstrong County woman received a minimal sentence of a few hours in jail yesterday after her attorney argued before a federal judge that her embezzlement of $158,500 from a bank was the result of her addiction to the Pennsylvania Lottery's Big 4 game.
Cheryl McClain, 39, spent about seven hours in the custody of the U.S. marshal's service following her hearing before Senior U.S. District Judge Maurice B. Cohill Jr. She was also ordered to spend the next six months under house arrest.
McClain had faced a maximum prison term of 12 to 18 months.
After the hearing, McClain's attorney, Thomas Ceraso, paid $100,000 of the $158,500 McClain was ordered to pay in restitution to National City Bank.
McClain, of Leechburg, was assistant manager of National City branches in Arnold and Vandergrift when she stole the money between 1997 and July 5, the day she was fired. McClain had worked at the bank for 21 years.
A psychiatrist and a social worker who treated McClain submitted reports to Cohill in which they said McClain spent the embezzled money on the state lottery to feed her gambling addiction.
Cohill ordered her to undergo mental health treatment for the addiction as a condition of her release.
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