BANGOR – A Brewer woman who served four months in jail for stealing from an employer 2 1/2 years ago was sentenced Monday in Penobscot County Superior Court to 3 1/2 years in prison for a similar crime and for welfare fraud.

Katie L. Rosenberg, 30, served four months of a four-year prison term for embezzling more than $13,000 from a Bangor-area physician. She was working as a receptionist at Trimble Reality Office in Bangor in January 2004 when she was convicted of that crime.

Last year, investigators found that she had issued unauthorized checks totaling about $8,500, Penobscot County Deputy District Attorney Michael Roberts said Monday after the sentencing.

Rosenberg pleaded guilty in January to the probation violation, the theft from Trimble and three counts of theft by deception for misusing and misappropriating food stamps, subsidized housing funding and child care benefits through Penquis CAP.

Because she was on probation at the time of the theft from the reality firm, Rosenberg was sentenced to 2 1/2 years for violating her probation, according to Roberts. She also was sentenced to 2 1/2 years to be served concurrently on the welfare fraud charges.

She also was sentenced to five years in prison with all but one suspended for the new theft from Trimble Realty. Maine Superior Court Justice Thomas Warren ordered that the sentences be served consecutively.