A controller for a commercial printing company sentenced for embezzling close to $2.8 million from his employer and failing to report the stolen funds as income to the Internal Revenue Service.

A federal court judge for the Central District Court of California handed 87 months in prison to 63-year-old Sean Edin Talaee of Glendale on Monday.

“(Talaee) embezzled a significant amount of money from Printograph and exposed the company – and its owner personally – to potential tax liability stemming from his theft of the company’s tax payments,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. “He did so repeatedly over the course of two years for his own personal gain.”

Federal court documents show between October 2015 and June 2018, Talaee worked as the controller overseeing the accounting and tax payments for Burbank-based commercial printing company Printograph, Inc. The company made a series of periodic estimated tax payments based on the company’s expected gross income, deductions, and credits for each year.

To enable these estimated tax payments, Talaee brought company checks to Printograph’s president and sole owner for her signature prior to their submission to the IRS, according to court documents.

Court documents show on at least eight separate occasions, Talaee inserted his own taxpayer information when filling out the IRS voucher forms that accompanied the estimated tax payments. Talaee then claimed the estimated tax payments for himself and caused the IRS to credit the payments to his own personal account.

Talaee would also intercept mail sent by an IRS requesting information regarding his conduct and claiming that they had no information about it, court documents said.

Court documents show during the course of the scheme, Talaee embezzled $2.8 million from his employer and falsely claimed estimated tax payments in that amount for the years 2015 through 2017, according to court documents.

Talaee bought a house in Toluca Lake with the stolen money, court documents said.

Court documents say Talaee also failed to report the embezzled money as income for these tax years causing a total tax loss of $740,085.

He was charged with one count of mail fraud and one count of subscribing to a false income tax return in March 2019. Talaee pleaded guilty to those charges in June.

Over $1.2 million was also seized related to the case. Toluca’s Lake house was seized and sold. The proceeds turned over to the government for the benefit of the victim, according to court documents.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission says tax fraud offenders decreased over 25 percent in fiscal year 2019 since fiscal year 2015. The average sentence imposed also decreased a month in the same time.