A former Ripon College official convicted of stealing over 428-thousand dollars from the private school is going to prison. At a hearing Thursday afternoon Fond du Lac judge Robert Wirtz sentenced 55 year old Ronald Haefner of Mequon to six years in prison and two years extended supervision. The judge also ordered three years probation. Heafner earlier pleaded guilty to ten theft and fraud charges. Fifty-four similar counts were dropped in a plea deal. Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney says he is satisfied with the sentence. “It was roughly a four year time frame with hundreds of transactions and hundreds of thousands of dollars that was just too hard to look past,” Toney told WFDL news. College spokeswoman Melissa Anderson says “the sentence demonstrates that those who embezzl for their own personal gain at the expense of students will be aggressively pursued and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” Haefner was Ripon’s director of information technology when he allegedly used a school credit card to buy things for himself, his family, and gifts for Brevard College in North Carolina that was headed by a former Ripon College president. Many of the gifts donated to Brevard were later returned. The stolen items included furniture and expensive computer equipment. Haefner worked at Ripon College from 1999 until he was fired last November, when school officials first learned what happened.
