Former Microsoft employee Robert Curry will be doing some serious jail time as punishment for stealing nearly half a million dollars from the company. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer web site reports that Curry was sentenced on Friday to 33 months in jail. He was convicted back in April for an embezzlement scheme where he admitted to taking $459,000 from Microsoft. Curry had worked as the company"s director of business development for Microsoft"s Strategic Partnerships Team in the Online Audience Business Group.
Curry, who graduated from Yale University and the Air Force Academy, would seem to be an unlikely person to steal money from his employer. Even Curry himself said he didn"t know exactly why he would take money from Microsoft. While he he said he was angry due to claims that his manager tried to humiliate him, Curry wrote in a letter to the court, "Unfortunately, I cannot definitively say why I did what I did. For the past nine months I have been asking myself why I was so self-destructive and irrational."
Between April and November of 2010, Curry admitted that he created a shell company and falsified invoices to make three large money transfers. Curry used a third party Microsoft vendor, Pentad Solutions, to help with the money transfers but that Pentad Solutions was not aware of his actions. Microsoft discovered the illegal transfers in January 2011 and fired him as a result. Prosecutors said that Curry had plans to steal additional money from Microsoft before his actions were found out. In addition to the jail time Curry was also ordered to pay back the money he took from Microsoft.