After wrestling openly in court with “where to draw the [sentencing] balance,” a federal judge on Tuesday sentenced former Municipal Credit Union CEO Kam Wong to five and a half years in prison for embezzling nearly $10 million from the credit union using a multi-faceted scheme.

The prison sentence was significantly less than what the judge had explained to a packed courtroom was the sentencing guidelines range of 97 to 121 months — or about 8 to 10 years. Still, the sentence also included a restitution order of $9.89 million and a forfeiture order of the same amount, even as the judge commented that it was unlikely Wong, 63, would ever be able to pay off the money.

The sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge John Koeltl of the Southern District of New York appears to bring to a close a sad chapter in the history of the credit union, which since 1916 has been serving city employees, and which today has at least $2.8 billion in assets and more than 500,000 members.

Thought to be the largest credit union in the metro New York area, MCU has also now been placed in conservatorship because of unsafe and unsound conditions, a development that Koeltl asked about repeatedly on Tuesday.

As numerous MCU employees sat shoulder to shoulder in the gallery, just yards from what appeared to be 15 or more Wong family members and friends, Wong's defense lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman squared off passionately with prosecutors Eli Mark and Daniel Richenthal.

A major point of contention — and a factor that Koetl seemed to consider closely — was how much of Wong's fraudulent and manipulative actions, which included allegedly intimidating and threatening subordinates, could be attributed to his destructive gambling and opioid addictions.

Lichtman came back to the addictions again and again, arguing that only the illnesses could explain how a hard-working man entering his 60s, who had risen to CEO after beginning at MCU in the 1980s, could have “cracked” and become a fraudster.

But for Southern District prosecutor Mark, the addictions could not mask what actually lied at the heart of Wong's fraud — a betrayal that has left MCU members and employees cheated and disillusioned — and he said that was greed.

From 2013 to January 2018, Wong — who Lichtman said had come from “crippling poverty” in Hong Kong and risen to become a revered figure throughout New York's Chinese-American community — stole millions of dollars in MCU funds. His methods included fooling the credit union into paying him several million dollars in lieu of purported long-term disability insurance, as well as submitting sham invoices for dental work never done on him or paid by him. He also created fake paperwork for taxes owed on employment benefits and reaped fraudulent funds that way, court documents say. In addition, prosecutors have said that once he was approached by investigators in 2018, he repeatedly found ways to obstruct their inquiry.

But Lichtman said that while Wong's actions were “atrocious,” he wasn't a “con man.” Rather, insisted the attorney, he was someone who had melted down after “decades of incredible stress” brought on by a life focused only on taking care of his family and working nonstop — 15 hours a day, six days a week — at his job.

Suddenly, Wong went from buying low-amount lottery tickets to spending $60,000 a month on lottery games, Lichtman told the courtroom.

As he spun out of control, he also borrowed and begged money from others at MCU in order to feed the addiction.

Eventually, Wong spent $5.5 million on lottery tickets, Lichtman said while deepening his voice to underscore the amount. In addition, Lichtman has told Koeltl that, eventually, Wong was consuming a daily cocktail of opiates, popping hydrocodone pills while swigging from a codeine-laced bottle of syrup at his desk.

Mark, though, rising from his seat to address the judge, countered sharply.

“He wasn't a junkie,” Mark said. “He was calculated.”

“Defendant was fraudulent, he was deceptive, he was dishonest,” the prosecutor said loudly.

Plus, Wong had “created a culture of subservience at the credit union,” he said.

Then, he recounted how Wong would force employees to drop whatever daily work they were doing, so that they could hurry up and cut and bring to him hand-written checks for $20,000, $30,000, or more.

The prosecutor also spoke of how Wong spent his stolen money on the “trappings of an expensive life,” like buying a Mercedes Benz and leasing high-end vehicles and getting fancy hotel rooms and sports tickets.

At one point, while chafing at the notion that Wong actually cared about the MCU deeply, Mark asked how could the credit union be “his baby” when “he so perverted it in his own personal interest.”

After hearing the arguments — and from Wong himself, who told the judge before crying softly that “there's no excuse for what I did, only pain and regret” — Koeltl arrived at what appeared to be a middle ground between the high-end sentence prosecutors wanted and Lichtman's pleas for leniency.

The judge noted that a guidelines-enhancement tied to the amount of monetary losses in the case was worth an additional two levels, but that it had been “barely” triggered by the facts of the case. Moreover, he noted that some critics have pointed to amount of monetary losses as a guidelines factor that should be reformed.

“The defendant's gambling addiction was surely a factor in the offense,” the judge told the courtroom, which sat rapt and silent.

He also said. “Defendant has betrayed all of his dreams,” and “he will lose the fruits of his entire life.”

Then, in settling on 5 ½ years in prison and many millions in restitution and forfeiture, the judge said that “the mitigating factors do not erase” the crime.

Wong “plainly abused the credit union,” Koeltl said grimly. He stole from its members, he said, and he did it to the “great detriment” of “people who needed the money.”