Schuylkill County and its conservation district have signed an agreement for the distribution of a $449,064 insurance settlement embezzled between 2007 and 2014.

Commissioners approved the agreement at a regular public meeting Wednesday.

Virginia G. Kunigonis, then 54, of Pottsville, on Oct. 15, 2015, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge William W. Caldwell to embezzling $452,186 from the conservation district.

In February 2016, she was sentenced to a year in federal prison.

Kunigonis, a county employee who worked for the conservation district, was charged with one count of theft from programs receiving federal funds. Prosecutors said Kunigonis forged 437 conservation district checks totaling $410,435 payable to herself between October of 2007 and May of 2014.

They also said she used a conservation district credit card to pay an additional $41,751 in personal expenses during that same time.

The conservation district received more than $10,000 in federal grant money in each of those years.

The embezzled money came from an account containing federal and state funds intended to be used for reclamation projects in the county, prosecutors said.

Kunigonis agreed to cooperate with the government, to make restitution as ordered by the court, and to forfeit the sum of $452,186, all of her interest in her Pottsville residence, and all of her interest in her county employee retirement account, net of taxes, to the government.

Kunigonis began working as an administrative assistant for the conservation district around 2002.