He embezzled $825,000, but gets no prison time

On October 4 of last year, Stuart Teshima, former chief financial officer for Epsilon Systems Solutions, confessed to embezzling $825,000 from the defense company over a period of eight years. He was in charge of the company's credit card system and misused his own card for personal travel, jewelry, gifts, furniture, lavish dinners, and even for paying his personal income tax.

Today (March 27) he was sentenced to three years of supervised release, including 12 months of home confinement. He got no time in prison — zilch. He has paid back roughly half of what he stole.

By contrast, Joshua Knaup, a former FedEx driver who set up a phony hedge fund, EquityPro Capital, stole more than $500,000 from investors. He told investors of his success with the fund, but never even opened an account to buy and sell investments. He was sentenced today to 33 months in prison and told to return the money.

This appears to be another lesson in the old axiom: if you are going to steal, steal big.