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Pawling resident Robert Bauer has been sentenced to a term of one and a half to four and a half years in prison and agreed to pay $195,850,50 after being found guilty by a jury earlier this year on multiple criminal charges.
Bauer, who was the superintendent of the Raymond Hill Cemetery from 2010 through 2015 had previously been convicted of two counts of grand larceny, criminal possession of a forged instrument and two counts of falsifying business records.
He was found guilty of submitting invoices that he was reimbursed for more than $160,000 in work that he never performed and for materials he did not purchase.
During the investigation, Putnam County District Attorney Robert Tendy noted that New York State Police and Putnam County DA Office investigators found evidence that Bauer had stolen from other cemeteries by whom he was employed and other vendors he had done business with.
On Oct. 19, he additionally pleaded guilty to four counts of grand larceny, admitting that he stole from Ballard Barrett Cemetery, Union Valley Cemetery, Putnam County Monuments, and Bulldog Concrete. Three of the thefts came during the same time period as the theft from Raymond Hill, while the fourth occurred the weekend before his trial kicked off.
Tendy said that, “due Due to the scope of Bauer’s theft against the Raymond Hill Cemetery, as well as the additional crimes that he pleaded guilty to, the District Attorney’s Office vigorously argued to Judge Schwartz that Bauer deserved a sentence of 4 to 12 years in state prison. At sentencing, Judge Schwartz described Bauer as a ‘brazen thief’ and sentenced him (to prison time).”
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