Louisville, Ky. (WHAS11) - A former University of Louisville dean is headed to prison.
Robert Felner was sentenced Monday to more than five years behind bars.
The judge in the case went along with the recommended sentence, which means that Felner will be spending five years and three months behind bars and will have to pay back more than $2 million that he admitted he stole from three different institutions.
Nearly two years after first being investigated, Robert Felner walked past a gauntlet of reporters to learn his fate.
Felner said nothing to reporters and nothing to the judge.
He gave no apology and no statement; he only confirmed that he understood he was pleading guilty.
Felner admitted to embezzling and laundering more than $2 million that was supposed to pay for studies of different school systems.
Instead, the money ended up going into a shell corporation that he used to buy houses and funnel money into a personal investment account.
“Our office will actively seek all restitution that we can that he owes,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Bryan Calhoun.
Under the agreement, Felner will have to repay more than $2.2 million dollars.
$510,000 will go to the University of Louisville to repay a stolen "No Child Left Behind" grant.
$88,750 will go to repay the Rock Island Council on Addiction, where his alleged co-conspirator Thomas Schroeder worked as executive director, and $1,646,000 will go to repay the University of Rhode Island.
So far, the U.S. Treasury Department has seized nearly $450,000, which will go towards repaying the University of Louisville.
Felner has forfeited another $219,000 to go to the victims.
“His legacy is going to be a rip-off artist,” said University of Louisville spokesperson Mark Hebert.
At the University of Louisville, new policies have been put in place to keep the same thing from happening again but college officials say Felner did an enormous amount of damage in a short time.
“He hurt the University's reputation. He brought it all on himself and really has no one to blame but himself for going to federal prison,” said Hebert.
Felner is expected to turn himself in and begin his sentence whenever his prison is assigned, most likely in the next two to four weeks.
“It's a standard procedure in all our cases,” said Calhoun. “Defendants like Mr. Felner in white collar cases are normally allowed to self report. That's 95% of our cases similar to this that's what happens.
Felner's attorney asked for him to be assigned to Montgomery Federal Prison Camp in Alabama when he does report.
It's been called one of the top ten luxury prisons in America,
That's where former sheriff Jim Greene served his sentence in the early 1990's.
