WPRO News and the Associated Press
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – A Massachusetts man will serve time for embezzling more than $5,000 from the Rhode Island Lottery.
Forty-seven-year-old Paul Mahfouz of Raynham, Massachusetts, was ordered Monday to serve six months of a five-year sentence behind bars. He must also pay $36,064.20 in restitution.
Mahfouz was found guilty in April by a Providence County Superior Court jury of embezzlement and of unlawful appropriation in an unrelated incident.
Prosecutors say Mahfouz embezzled $5,064.20 from the Rhode Island Lottery when he took funds that he held in trust for the lottery as a retail agent and used them for himself. Mahfouz owned a Shell gas station in Providence.
Prosecutors say Mahfouz also took $31,000 from Elie Antoun to sell him a state motor vehicle inspection machine, but Mahfouz never delivered the machine to him.
