Woman Pleads Guilty to Selling $2.1 Million of Non-existent Promotional Products to Medtronic

A California woman pleaded guilty to fraud Friday for selling $2.1 million of non-existent merchandise to Medtronic Inc.

Jennifer Rutherford, 40, of San Jose, Calif., pleaded guilty in federal court in Minneapolis to one count of wire fraud and faces a prison sentence of up to 20 years.

She was responsible for choosing vendors to supply T-shirts, key chains, baseball caps and other marketing merchandise that company representatives could distribute at trade shows, government attorneys said.

Rutherford said in her plea that from June 2004 to June 2009, she created three shell companies and then pretended to buy merchandise from the shell companies.