Johnson County Man Sentenced to 65 Months For Embezzling From a Lexington Business

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Franklin Fletcher, 55, of Oil Springs, Ky., was sentenced on Friday to 65 months in federal prison, by Chief United States District Judge, Danny C. Reeves, for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.  Fletcher was also ordered to pay $374,192.89 in restitution.

Fletcher pleaded guilty on May 9, 2019, and admitted to embezzling nearly $375,000 from his former employer, NYTIS Exploration, from September 2012 until March 2018.  According to court records, Fletcher abused his authority as an Accounting Manager to generate checks that he would deposit into his own accounts.  He engaged in a complicated series of actions to hide the stolen money from his employer.  He further concealed his crime by writing the checks in another individual’s name and forging her signature on the endorsement line.

According to court documents, this was not Fletcher’s first act of embezzlement.  Records indicate that from some point until 2009, Fletcher embezzled nearly $1,000,000 from his then-employer, again abusing his position in accounting at that Kentucky energy company.  Fletcher paid a significant portion of the money he embezzled from NYTIS Exploration against the restitution agreement he had entered into with his prior employer.

Under federal law, Fletcher must serve 85 percent of his prison sentence, and upon his release, he will be under the supervision of the United States Probation Office for three years.

Robert M. Duncan, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky and Richard Ferretti, Special Agent in Charge for the United States Secret Service, jointly announced the sentence.