A Juneau man pleaded guilty to federal theft charges after stealing nearly $580,000 from multiple banks and credit unions between 2019 and 2022.<\/p>\n
Austin Nolan Dwight Rutherford, 29, pleaded guilty Thursday to federal charges of theft, embezzlement, and misapplication of funds by a person connected in a capacity with a bank and credit union. An internal audit discovered he had stolen $579,400 during his time employed as an armed transport guard for a private company that serviced major banks and credit unions.<\/p>\n
The company serviced banks such as U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo Bank, Key Bank and Alaska USA Federal Credit Union. According to a news release by the Department of Justice, Rutherford began stealing funds after he was transferred to the company’s Juneau branch in March 2020 and continued until May 2022.<\/p>\n
After his guilty plea, Rutherford is now scheduled for sentencing by a federal district court judge on Aug. 17. He faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison, a fine of $1 million and up to life on supervised release.<\/p>\n
Rutherford has agreed to pay back the amount stolen as part of his plea.<\/p>\n
• Contact reporter Clarise Larson at clarise.larson@juneauempire.com or (651)-528-1807.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He faces up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":890,"featured_media":100089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[640],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-100088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-cops-and-courts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/890"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100088"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=100088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}