Someone Wanted to Watch Tom Brady Play a Bit Too Much

The bloom may have worn off the Tom Brady rose for Gisele Bundchen some time ago, but a New Hampshire woman's infatuation for the former New England Patriot spurred her to fork over nearly $6,000 for tickets to watch him play against his old team—except the money wasn't hers to begin with. NBC Boston reports that a federal judge on Thursday sentenced 39-year-old Stephanie Pratt to 30 months behind bars and three years of supervised release, following her guilty plea over the summer to a wire fraud charge. She'd been accused of stealing almost $500,000 from her employer, some of which she used to fund her 2021 trip to Gillette Stadium, where Brady had returned to face the Patriots as a quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

• The plot: Boston 25 reports that Pratt lifted $492,325.34 over a period of more than six years from the company she worked for in Hinsdale, a scheme she was able to pull off in her role as the firm's office administrator, with access to its credit cards and bank accounts. Prosecutors say Pratt blew the stolen cash on such items as a hot tub, plane tickets, $50,000 worth of products from Amazon.com, and "miscellaneous herbs and spices," per NBC. She also ponied up more than $5,600 for tickets to that Brady-Patriots matchup, says US Attorney Jane Young.

• Her process: Prosecutors say Pratt pulled it off by cashing unauthorized checks to herself, then logging them in as payments to legit vendors in her employer's books. Pratt was also accused of altering other company records and using the company credit card to make upward of 1,000 unapproved purchases. Despite the number of purchases, Pratt had tried to argue that she'd simply clicked the wrong button at checkout.
• The kicker: Just six months before she started ripping off her employer, Pratt had finished serving out a prison sentence for swiping close to $10,000 from another employer.
• Hubris: When she was caught this second time around, the former Keene resident insisted she'd been siphoning off money to help out the owner's son—despite the fact that, unbeknownst to her, the owner's son had died. She also tried to strong-arm the owner's widow into giving her a Christmas bonus when she was canned, prosecutors say.
• Authorities: "The defendant will spend the next two and a half years in federal prison for her deceit, along with the financial and emotional turmoil she caused her employer," Young said, per the Manchester Ink Link. "A greedy, serial fraudster," adds Jodi Cohen, special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston Division.

(More weird crimes stories.)