Woman sentenced for stealing $2.1 million from Medtronic

A California woman has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for selling $2.1 million of non-existent merchandise to Medtronic Inc.Jennifer Rutherford, 40, of San Jose, Calif., was sentenced by a federal judge in Minneapolis to 45 months in prison on one count of wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.Rutherford worked as a senior marketing manager for Kyphon Inc., a Sunnyvale, Calif., spinal products company that Fridley-based Medtronic (NYSE: MDT) bought in July 2007, prosecutors said.She was responsible for choosing vendors to supply T-shirts, key chains, baseball caps and other marketing merchandise that company representatives could distribute at trade shows, government attorneys said.Rutherford pleaded guilty last July, saying that from June 2004 to June 2009, she created three shell companies and then pretended to buy merchandise from the shell companies. Rutherford said she then submitted invoices to company officials.
“However, no merchandise ever existed,” the U.S. Attorney’s office said.