According to The East Hampton Star, former Long Island Radio General Manager Stephanie McNamara Bitis has agreed to pay $302,585 in restitution after she admitted to using a company credit card for over 600 personal expenses. It’s still not clear if McNamara Bitis will go to jail.
According to the paper, McNamara Bitis ‘ attorney and the United States attorney prosecuting the case agreed on the $302,585 dollar amount and advised the court last week. Both sides had been arguing over the total dollar amount and how the former GM would pay it back.
The report quotes a letter to the court from McNamara Bitis’ attorney: “Consistent with the Mandatory Victim Restitution Act, the first $52,585.02 will be payable to the victim in this case, the defendant’s former employer LRS Radio, L.L.C., with the balance paid to the Granite State Insurance Company.”
McNamara Bitis was GM for Long Island Radio Broadcasting from 2015- 2017. She also worked for CBS Radio.
Long Island Radio Broadcasting owner Lauren Stone says a suspicious wire transfer caused her to review the company’s American Express statements. After noticing several charges that appeared fraudulent, Stone engaged an outside law firm to conduct an investigation into the radio station’s financials.
Stone says the investigation revealed that McNamara Bits had purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal charges on LIRB’s corporate American Express card. “Among other things, Bitis charged a family vacation to Aruba, personal visits to the orthodontist, boat maintenance and boat fuel and even tax services for delinquent personal income tax payments. She concealed her fraud by submitting falsified documents to LIRB’s accountant. She went so far as to create her own bogus American Express statements, removing vendors such as her orthodontist to hide the personal charges.”
Sentencing which had been pushed back to June 7th has now been pushed back to the end of July.
