A Luthersville woman will serve four years in prison for embezzling nearly $200,000 from an Atlanta engineering company, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said Wednesday.

Gwendolyn Cummings, 48, a former bookkeeper and office manager for BAA Mechanical Engineers, began stealing from the company in April 2004 after convincing her boss that she could save the company money by handling the payroll herself instead of outsourcing it, Howard said.

She set up a business checking account and began paying herself an inflated salary and sending herself duplicate payments, embezzling a total of $198,269, Howard said in a prepared statement.

The scheme unraveled in December 2005 when the company tried to pay Christmas bonuses and found the account was overdrawn, Howard said.

Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford accepted the plea bargain Aug. 22 for Cummings to serve four years of a 20-year prison sentence. Cummings, who is free on bond, is to report back to Bedford on Sept. 15 to be taken into custody.