A former Tiffany & Co. vice president is claiming that she was so depressed over not being able to have children that she turned to stealing more than $2.1 million in diamond-encrusted bling from the famed Fifth Avenue jewelry company.
Disgraced blue-box exec Ingrid Lederhaas-Okun, 47, coughed up the defense through her lawyer at her sentencing in Manhattan Federal Court on Monday.
“It was big part of her unhappiness, her inside breaking,” insisted the perp’s public defender, Sabrina Shroff. “It’s a huge disappointment for a woman [not to be able to have children].”
Lederhaas-Okun, who once earned $360,000 a year at Tiffany’s, broke into tears before the judge gave her an early Christmas present and cut her a break in jail time.
She was sentenced to a year and a day in prison – a far cry from the 37 to 46 months she faced after copping a plea to interstate transportation of stolen property charges in July. Prosecutors had asked for the stiffer sentence.
But Judge Paul Gardephe said he believed Lederhaas-Okun’s claim that she “wasn’t motivated by greed” considering she and her now-ex-husband’s yearly earnings had approached $900,000 combined.
“The ‘why’ of the crime is much more difficult to explain. It was inconceivable,” the judge said.
“The amount of jewelry she stole over many years is staggering,” he said. “Because the thefts took place over many years, there was plenty of time for her to reflect.”
Weeping, Lederhaas-Okun admitted to the judge that she “brought the situation on” herself” and is committed to making Tiffany “as whole as possible.”
She has been ordered to forfeit $2.1 million and to pay $2.2 million.
The former exec oversaw product development for the famed bauble business.
Her duties included ensuring that various jewelry designs could be mass-produced, and she had authority to “check out” prototypes to obtain cost estimates.
She admitted to checking out more than 165 pieces of the jewelry starting in 2005 – including numerous diamond bracelets in 18-karat gold.
She stashed them at her luxurious $4 million Darien, Ct., home before pawning much of them off for $1.3 million to an international jewelry retailer not named in the complaint.
Her husband, successful hedge-fund manager Robert Okun, filed for divorce three weeks after her July arrest.
In addition to being depressed about being childless, Lederhaas-Okun previously claimed that she started stealing after being skipped over for a promotion and then having the person she lost out to make her work-life miserable.
She was ultimately laid her off from her job.
Tiffany only discovered the missing jewelry days after Lederhaas-Okun left the company, when auditors performing a routine audit reviewed the inventory she was responsible for.
Lederhaas-Okun declined comment after court Monday and tried to duck photographers outside the courthouse by shielding her face with a huge black umbrella.
The comical scene played out for two blocks before she eventually ducked into a Lower Manhattan Office building with her public defender.
In October, Robert Okun filed legal papers claiming the experience has wrongfully cost him a small fortune. He claims that some of the jewelry seized by the FBI from the home he and his ex once shared belong to him and should be returned.