Former Montco, Pennylvania fire academy official sent to prison for embezzlement

A former Montgomery County Fire Academy official who admitted embezzling $168,165 from Montgomery County Chiefs of Police Association and Montgomery County Fire Advisory Board funds he managed was sentenced to prison Wednesday.Robert M. Linsinbigler Jr., 55, who pleaded guilty to theft and forgery charges Feb. 23, was sentenced by Judge Steven T. O’Neill to 10 to 23 months in prison and seven years’ probation. Previously, he signed over his $120,000 county pension to put toward restitution and may also be forced to sell his East Norriton home to pay the rest.At his sentencing hearing Wednesday, the defendant’s wife, Patricia Linsinbigler, testified that in the past few years her husband “drank every day” and became distant from her and the family.The former official has been in treatment with Alcoholics Anonymous and hasn’t consumed alcohol for more than a year, according to court testimony.Linsinbigler, who has completed eight steps of a 12-step treatment program, testified that in recent years he drank beer at lunch and stayed out drinking after work.“It was a seven-day-a-week thing,” he said.The East Norriton man said he had lost about 80 pounds since his arrest.Between 2001 and 2009, while he worked as director of the fire academy campus at in the Conshohocken section of Plymouth, he wrote fraudulent checks to Countryside to make payments on his mortgage, a home equity loan and for personal expenses, according to court papers. Linsinbigler had worked for Montgomery County for 32 years before he was arrested for the fraud scheme. At the fire academy, he oversaw training programs for firefighters, police and other first responders.
Two of the accounts he bilked were set up to train county first responders. Since the 1970s, the Chiefs of Police Association has operated the Emergency Vehicle Operators Course, a comprehensive driver training program for county police officers. In the 1990s, the program was expanded to include training for ambulance and fire truck drivers. Course tuition was paid for by county municipalities, and the funds were deposited in EVOC’s bank account, according to the criminal complaint.Linsinbigler also managed finances for the Fire Advisory Board, which is responsible for training and certifying firefighters.In February 2009, Jesse Stemple, the law enforcement liaison at the fire academy, reviewed copies of checks from the Chiefs of Police Association’s account and noticed discrepancies. Several checks had been written to Countrywide, a home mortgage lender.When Stemple asked Linsinbigler about the checks, he admitted using the funds for his personal use, according to prosecutors. An investigation discovered that the former bookkeeper had written a total of 79 checks to the mortgage company since 2001.Linsinbigler admitted to Assistant District Attorney Chris Parisi that he initially lied to county detectives about the extent of the theft. While skimming the accounts, he forged the signatures of Stemple, Upper Dublin Police Chief Terry Thompson, retired fire academy secretary Peggy Stansfield and deceased Whitemarsh Police Chief Richard Zolko.On the stand Wednesday, Linsinbigler testified he was remorseful for betraying the trust of fire and police officials.“I feel totally embarrassed,” he said. “I ruined (my) professional standards by doing what I did.”Parisi said the official used his position of authority to cover his criminal activity.“He used that to hide behind day after day,” he said. “It’s not about the money but the trust.”O’Neill laid out his reasoning for the sentence he would mete out. Forging of police and fire officials’ signatures, the judge said, was “particularly egregious.”“He stole money like a common thief,” O’Neill said.Linsinbigler, who was spared a state sentence, will be eligible for work release. He worked for the from fire academy in 1974 until 2009, except for three of those years. When he was fired he was earning an annual salary of $70,768.