Former Microsoft manager gets 22-month sentence in embezzlement

Carolyn M. Gudmundson, the former Microsoft employee who pleaded guilty in January to embezzling about $1 million, was sentenced in federal court Friday to 22 months in prison.

The 44-year-old Kirkland woman will also serve three years of supervised release and repay Microsoft some $923,000 in restitution.

A Microsoft employee from 1987 to 2004, Gudmundson became a program manager in the MSN division in 2000, responsible for acquiring, registering and renewing Internet domain names.

In that post, over the next three years, Gudmundson used her personal credit card to make payments, then altered her American Express receipts to overstate her expenses and collect higher reimbursements, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kate Crisham.

She also submitted invoices to Expedia, payable to herself, for domain-name registrations that had already been paid through an arrangement between Microsoft and Expedia.

In another scheme, she asked Microsoft to reimburse a Glendale, Calif., company for domain names it supposedly bought on Microsoft's behalf, many of which Microsoft already owned. In turn she told that company to send checks to her mother's address, the U.S. attorney said in court.

As part of the plea bargain, the U.S. attorney agreed to drop 17 other counts of wire and mail fraud.

The sentencing had been delayed three times, originally scheduled for April, as the parties disagreed over how to calculate the damages.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez sentenced Gudmundson to less prison time than the U.S. attorney's recommendation of 27 months and the probation office's recommendation of 36 months.

Martinez said the lower sentence was appropriate since she pleaded guilty.

Gudmundson, choking back tears throughout Friday's hearing, will report to serve jail time after Sept. 15 so she can be with her two daughters through the start of the school year.

Isaac Arnsdorf: 206-464-2397 or iarnsdorf@seattletimes.com