Naperville Man Gets 2 Years In Prison For Embezzlement Scheme

NAPERVILLE, IL — A Naperville man who formerly served as an executive of a California berry company will spend 29 months in prison and pay $1.5 million in restitution after pleading guilty to charges of wire fraud and money laundering this summer.

Marc Marier, 42, of Naperville, Illinois submitted at least 15 fake invoices to his employer, Driscoll's, from November 2017 to May 2018. He used the $1.5 million to buy a five-bedroom Naperville home and GMC Yukon XL, according to a news release from the Department of Justice U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of California.

He also gave a $75,000 cashier's check to his girlfriend, prosecutors said.

Marier was paid to move from Illinois to California to accept a job as director of real estate and workplace services in October 2017.

He asked about his invoice approval authority a month into the job and learned he could approve up to $250,000 invoices, prosecutors said. Within weeks he started submitting and approving invoices from a fake company called TNC US Inc. and moved the money into a bank account that he created for the scheme, prosecutors said.

He resigned the day after he learned Driscoll's had launched an internal investigation into the invoices.

The government has seized his home, truck and $700,000 from bank accounts, prosecutors said.

He pleaded guilty to the charges in June. Marier was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, who also ordered that he serve three years under supervised release.