While helping run the massive embezzlement scheme that caused a clout-heavy Bridgeport bank to fail seven years ago, vice president James Crotty was secretly stealing money from the bank, claiming he spent it on postage, prosecutors say.

Crotty, who pleaded guilty in the bank embezzlement, was sentenced Tuesday to a year in prison. It’s one of the stiffest sentences Chief U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall has imposed upon any of the employees or officials of the tiny bank, including Gembara’s sister Janice Weston, another vice president who served three months in prison.

Crotty stole $13,000 before he was fired in spring 2017 a few months before federal regulators discovered that the president, chairman and CEO of Washington Federal Bank for Savings, John Gembara, had been running a d

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