Seth Wenig/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gary Foster, a former Citigroup vice president who admitted embezzling more than $22 million from the bank for his personal use. He was sentenced Friday to 97 months in prison.
A CROOKED CITIGROUP executive says he can’t explain why he stole nearly $23 million from the global bank to buy fancy apartments and wheels — but he’ll spend the next eight years in prison trying to figure it out.
While Gary Foster cools his heels behind bars, federal prosecutors will be seizing his $1 million condo on Second St. in Jersey City with sweeping views of the Hudson River, a flat in downtown Brooklyn and another on W. 48th St. in Manhattan, not to mention the Maserati, Ferrari and BMW cars.
“I can’t give you an excuse why this happened,” Foster told Judge Eric Vitaliano in Brooklyn Federal Court on Friday.
“It’s just hard for me to comprehend, to look back and comprehend how crazy it was,” he continued. “Why did I go as far as I did? There’s no explanation.”
The judge listened patiently and then summed up Foster’s problem.
“It’s greed,” Vitaliano said. “You wanted the money.”
Citigroup was just as clueless as Foster claims he is about the scheme, which was carried out from 2003 to June 2011 until he was busted at Kennedy Airport getting off a flight from Bangkok.
Foster, a former vice president in Citigroup’s treasury finance department in Long Island City, pleaded guilty last year to wiring millions of dollars to his personal bank account.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Yeager declined to suggest Foster was still up to no good when he applied for a debit card recently for a bank account that is frozen by the feds.
With Citigroup’s money, Foster’s real estate portfolio also included a $3 million mansion in Englewood Cliffs outfitted with a $500,000 entertainment system and a bathroom mirror that converted into a video screen.
Besides the pads he purchased for himself, Foster also bought autos for his mother, his step-father and brother.
Foster, 36, apologized profusely to the family members and co-workers he betrayed. “My kids are cursed with my last name,” he said. “I did not want this to be part of their history. I just hope I can take the attention away from my family and friends and all the blame will fall on me.”
“To this day I don’t know why my family stands by me,” he whined.
Vitaliano noted that it was no small achievement to steal $23 million — although not one that should make the Jamaican immigrant and Rutgers University graduate proud.
