Seven-year prison term ordered for embezzler Laura R. Kreisler stole $857,000 when she led marketing company's finance department

A former financial executive of an Overland Park company was sentenced Monday to nearly seven years in prison for embezzlement.

A Johnson County District Court judge sentenced Laura R. Kreisler to 83 months in the Kansas Department of Corrections after she pleaded guilty to stealing more than $857,000 from Creative Consumer Concepts. Kreisler was taken into custody after sentencing.

Kreisler was hired by Creative Consumer Concepts, also called C3, in 1998 as an accounting clerk. She eventually was promoted to head its finance department, and she embezzled the funds over a 3Ѕ-year period.

In 1997, Kreisler pleaded guilty to stealing thousands of dollars from a previous employer, Suburban Lawn & Garden. She received a suspended sentence and three years' probation from the Jackson County Circuit Court.

C3 specializes in promoting and marketing fast food and movies to children. It has about 55 employees and annual sales of more than $50 million.

Bob Cutler, C3's chief executive, said in an interview in April after Kreisler's guilty plea that the company did not conduct a pre-employment background check on Kreisler when she was hired because at the time she was not going to be managing money.

"The mistake we made is that as she advanced, we didn't do any further investigation," Cutler said. "You get lulled to sleep based on the performance and the credibility and the ability to grow relationships out of trust and integrity -- or what you think is integrity -- over many years of service."