Elizabeth L. Dura, a former circulation systems assistant at The Washington Times, was sentenced to six months behind bars on a charge stemming from embezzlement of nearly $100,000 from the newspaper.

The 53-year-old woman was accused of stealing $96,000 by  generating hundreds of paychecks for "ghost" carriers and teenage hawkers, prosecutors said.

Dura began to obtain personal identification information for people who no longer worked at the paper or who had never worked at the paper and requested paychecks in their names, according to charging documents. She picked the checks up from the accounting department and cashed them at liquor stores or deposited them into her bank accounts, prosecutors said. In each case, she forged the signature of the person named on the check, charging documents said.