Former Posterscope U.S. Head Sentenced
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
Crime doesn’t pay – but the sentence could have been worse!
You may remember our article last fall when Posterscope’s former US president and its financial director were arrested for accounting fraud.
We see that Todd Hansen, former Posterscope U.S. president, has received a fairly light sentence compared to what he could have received. Hansen was sentenced to four months in prison by a New York Court judge last week for his role in an accounting fraud scheme that artificially inflated profits at the Aegis Group-owned out-of-home specialist over a five-year period.
In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff sentenced Hansen to three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $231,000 in restitution and a fine of $173,450.90.
Both he and James Backley, former Posterscope financial director, could have received maximum sentences of 40 years each. Buckley was sentenced last October to time-served – effectively the one day that he was in custody following his arrest – plus one year of supervised release. In addition, he was ordered to pay restitution of nearly $27,000.
Hansen and Buckley had hatched a plan that made it appear that Posterscope was more profitable than it was by recording higher client billing rates than actually occurred. As a result, fictitious profits of nearly $20 million over the five-year period from 2004 to 2009 were recorded in the company books and both men received higher compensation based on the false accounting.
Hansen was issued a heavier sentence than Buckley because investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan and the Federal Bureau of Investigation also found he had misused thousands of dollars of company funds to pay for expenses and fees that directly benefited him, his family, and friends, and that were unrelated to the company’s legitimate business.
Hansen left Posterscope at the end of 2009 during a management shakeup and corporate reorganization. (He was replaced by Connie Garrido.) He then spent a short time as president of Clear Channel Outdoor’s San Francisco division but left before his arrest.
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