Ex-Naperville lawyer gets prison for forgery

A disbarred Naperville attorney was sentenced Monday to 3½ years in prison for forging company checks and doctoring company ledgers to conceal embezzlement.

DuPage County Judge John Kinsella imposed the term on 47-year-old Steven Gustafson, who was found guilty of forgery in July after a bench trial, authorities said.

Prosecutors said the felony case stemmed from allegations that Gustafson wrote unauthorized checks to himself against a client trust bank account held by his law firm between 2001 and 2006. In total, they alleged, he took more than $466,000 and used the money for personal credit card bills, car payments, a bathroom remodeling project and property taxes.

“Mr. Gustafson’s greed got the best of him,” State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said in a news release. “He took advantage of his position as a partner in his law firm to line his own pockets and caused a significant hardship for the company and its employees.”

The allegations surfaced while Gustafson was a shareholder at the Naperville law firm of James, Gustafson & Thompson, which was dissolved in February 2006. Gustafson was disbarred in May 2010.

Like most white-collar criminals, Gustafson knew his victim’s finances and how to cover his tracks, prosecutors said.

“This is exactly what we saw in this case, as Mr. Gustafson would write checks to pay for his own expenses and falsify the check stubs to make it appear that the checks were legitimate,” Berlin said.

Gustafson, of the 1900 block of Morgan Circle, must serve at least half of the sentence, or 21 months, before he is eligible for parole.