A resident of Spring, Texas, has been sentenced for embezzling more than $1 million from his employer to fund a gambling habit, according to an announcement by U.S. Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei.
Donald Ray Owens Jr., 34, pleaded guilty on May 9, 2025. U.S. District Judge George C. Hanks Jr. sentenced Owens to 24 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release. The court also ordered him to pay $1,081,722.96 in restitution.
During the sentencing hearing, Owens testified and requested leniency, explaining that he had developed an addiction to online sports gambling. The court cited the financial harm caused to the company and repeated misuse of its credit card when imposing the sentence.
Owens worked at Dominion Aesthetics Technology Inc., where between May 2022 and January 2024 he used a company credit card approximately 217 times to send money to an online payment platform account opened in his wife’s name. He then transferred those funds into bank accounts he controlled before moving them into a personal gambling account.
He admitted using the company credit card to embezzle about $1.1 million for gambling debts.
Owens will remain on bond until he voluntarily surrenders to a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility yet to be determined.
The case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hileman.
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas is part of the U.S. Department of Justice and serves under the Attorney General according to its official website. This office prosecutes federal crimes and handles civil cases for the government as described on its website. It employs more than 200 attorneys covering 43 counties with a population exceeding nine million as detailed here, with offices located in Houston, Galveston, Corpus Christi, Laredo, McAllen and Brownsville according to official information. Past leaders have included Alamdar Hamdani (2022-2025) and Ryan Patrick as noted on their history page.
