PORTLAND — A Limerick woman who said she embezzled $10,000 from a bank because of her husband’s drug addiction will not face incarceration beyond the night she has already spent in jail.
Annamarie Skillings, 27, was sentenced in U.S. District Court on Monday to time served and four years of supervised release. Judge Nancy Torresen also ordered Skillings to pay restitution of $10,000 to her former employer, KeyBank.
Skillings was working at the Kennebunk branch of KeyBank when an unscheduled audit on July 18, 2011, revealed a shortfall of $10,000. Skillings, who had worked at the bank for five years, admitted the thefts to a manager, a bank investigator and the FBI, according to court documents.
Skillings’ then-husband was addicted to heroin and opiates, and threatened to physically harm her and take her children and her car, according to a sentencing memorandum by the defense. He used her earnings to pay for drugs, leaving their mortgage and other bills unpaid, according to the document.
At the time of the audit, Skillings told the bank investigator that she was not in any physical danger because she had asked her husband to leave and he had not returned, according to the document.
Kennebunk police arrested Skillings on a theft charge that day. She spent the night in jail before her mother bailed her out. Skillings pleaded guilty in December and has been free on personal recognizance.
The federal charge of bank theft carries a maximum penalty of 30 years imprisonment and a $1 million fine, but the circumstances of the case — including no criminal history — put her in the recommended sentencing range of no incarceration to six months.
Skillings’ court-appointed attorney, J. Hilary Billings, argued in his memo that there was little, if any, need to impose a sentence for deterrence or to protect the public.
“Annamarie, who has never before come into contact with the criminal justice system, was arrested, handcuffed, and (led) off to jail. She spent the night in the York County Jail,” he wrote. “This experience had a major impact on her, an impact that will be with her forever.”
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