A former treasurer for the city of Zeigler has been sentenced in federal court to 4-years in prison, after being charged with embezzlement. Ryan Thorpe was sentenced on Tuesday in federal court to pay a special assessment to the government of $500 and restitution without interest of a total of nearly $321,400. Thorpe plead guilty to federal charges of wire fraud and embezzlement back in March of this year. According to the Department of Justice, from 2013 to August of 2017, Thorpe wrote checks to himself from the city of Ziegler. Investigators said that Thorpe would take the checks and white out his name in the payee section of the checks, would write the names of vendors and suppliers that the city did business with, and make copies of the altered checks and place those copies in the bank records, which are kept by the city. Thorpe then would allegedly shred the whited-out copies of the checks. Thorpe concealed his theft further by submitting false monthly Treasurer’s Reports to the Zeigler City Council, according to a release from the Department of Justice.