Embezzlement is a crime committed when a person entrusted with another person's money or property illegally takes it for his own use. This crime is not like a robbery, where a thief takes something that belongs to someone else. The owner has already turned the property over to the embezzler.
Embezzlement is a modern crime. In early English common law, a man could not be charged with theft if the property he took had been turned over to him legally, even though he did not use the property in the way it's owner wanted. But merchants and bankers needed a law to protect their property while their employees handled it. The courts devised the crime of embezzlement to cover this situation.
The punishment for embezzlement is imprisonment. Usually, the penalty is the same as for larceny, a year or more for a major theft and less than a year for a minor one.
