Regina Schenck, 46, of Herald, a small community in southern Sacramento County, is headed to prison for three years and five months, the sentenced handed down for her stealing $1.3 million from her employer, Sacramento law firm Diepenbrock Harrison.

She was also ordered to repay the $1.3 million to her former employer plus $264,000 in restitution to the IRS. She pleaded guilty on Sept. 1.

Between 2003 and 2008, Ms. Schenck wrote law firm checks to pay her own bills, created false documents, and told lies to cause law firm partners to authorize checks that she secretly used to buy five horses and a horse trailer, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Segal, who prosecuted the case.

She also used the law firm’s computer network to inflate her salary, give herself bonuses and benefits, and she omitted her fraud-procured income from her tax return, prosecutors say.

A federal court has reversed a ruling that overturned Boeing Co.’s $1.1 billion contract for maintenance of an Air Force refueling tanker jet.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s ruling Tuesday overturns a 2008 decision by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and reinstates Chicago-based Boeing’s 10-year contract for work on the 50-year-old fleet of KC-135 tankers, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Boeing, which built the KC-135, was awarded the maintenance contract in September 2007, and the aerospace giant has been awarded similar contracts for nearly a decade.

Competitor Alabama Aircraft Industries Inc. of Birmingham, Ala., filed suit, alleging the contract was not properly awarded to Boeing and citing issues involving pricing and past performance, The Associated Press reported.

The United States attended a meeting of the International Criminal Court's management board for the first time Wednesday in a sign it has stopped shunning the world's only permanent war crimes tribunal.

The United States has not ratified the court's founding treaty, the Rome Statute, partly because of fears the court could become a forum for politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. troops.

U.S. war crimes ambassador Stephen Rapp sat as an observer near the back of the hall during the opening session of Assembly of States Parties, which is made up of the 110 countries that recognize the court's jurisdiction, and oversees its activities.

Rapp, a former chief prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, is expected to make a statement to the assembly on Thursday. He did not say what he would discuss.

He told The Associated Press his presence is a sign the Obama administration wants to "re-engage with the court" but said Monday while visiting Kenya that possible ratification by Washington of the Rome Statute is likely still years away.

Assembly President Christian Wenaweser, a diplomat from Lichtenstein, said Rapp's presence was "the most concrete expression we have seen so far that the policies in place under the past administration are changing."

Democrats on Tuesday crushed a Senate filibuster against a controversial appeals court nominee, demonstrating to Republicans they can't stop President Barack Obama from turning the federal judiciary to the left.

The 70-29 vote limited debate over the qualifications of U.S. District Judge David Hamilton of Indiana, and assured his elevation to the Chicago-based appeals court. Sixty votes were needed to end the filibuster, but confirmation only requires a simple majority of the 100-member Senate.

Ten Republicans repudiated their own party leaders and voted to limit debate. The Obama administration made a crucial decision from the outset by getting the support of Hamilton's home-state Republican senator, Richard Lugar.

The vote emphatically warned Republicans that with only 40 senators, they're too outnumbered to prevent Obama from making major inroads into a judiciary that was populated over eight years with conservative judges chosen by President George W. Bush.

Republicans have objected to holding a vote on Hamilton's confirmation since June, when the Judiciary Committee reported his nomination favorably to the full Senate.

Conservative Republican senators and their judicial-watching outside groups then launched a major political assault on Hamilton.

They criticized his rulings against Christian prayers in the Indiana legislature and against a menorah in the Indiana Municipal Building's holiday display.

Hackers are increasingly targeting law firms and public relations companies with a sophisticated e-mail scheme that breaks into their computer networks to steal sensitive data, often linked to large corporate clients doing business overseas.

The FBI has issued an advisory that warns companies of "noticeable increases" in efforts to hack into the law firms' computer systems — a trend that cyber experts say began as far back as two years ago but has grown dramatically.

In many cases, the intrusions are what cyber security experts describe as "spear phishing," attacks that come through personalized spam e-mails that can slip through common defenses and appear harmless because they have subject lines appropriate to a person's business and appear to come from a trusted source.

"Law firms have a tremendous concentration of really critical, private information," said Bradford Bleier, unit chief with the FBI's cyber division. Infiltrating those computer systems, he said, "is a really optimal way to obtain economic, personal and personal security related information."

Alan Paller, director of research at SANS Institute, a computer-security organization, said Monday that a major law firm in New York was hacked into in early 2008 in an attack that originated in China.

FBI officials did not immediately return messages for comment on the China connection. The FBI advisory was dated Nov. 1, 2009.

U.S. officials have been cautious about publicly linking cyber attacks to China. But recent government reports have described computer attacks believed to have originated in China, although it is unclear if the intrusions were conducted by, or with the endorsement of, any element of the Chinese government.

A Scottish man who was branded unruly and disruptive by the flight crew on a Philadelphia-to-London jet that was diverted to Boston has been ordered held on $300 bail.

Prosecutors say Glasgow resident John Alexander Murray's arm was in a splint and he refused the crew's requests to keep it out of the aisle. They say he then became belligerent and demanded to be taken back to Philadelphia.

A spokesman for Boston's Logan International Airport says Murray was arrested after US Airways Flight 728 landed at around 11 p.m. Monday. The plane departed for London two hours later without him.

Murray pleaded not guilty to a charge of interfering with a flight crew at his arraignment Tuesday at East Boston District Court. The 50-year-old was ordered to return to court Dec. 1.

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