Tefera Workneh is shown in a U.S. Air Force courtesy photo.

FAIRFIELD — The six-year sentence given in the 2015 court-martial of Tefera Workneh, a former airman at Travis Air Force Base who stole $420,000 in government funds to cover his losses playing casino blackjack, has been upheld by the U.S. Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals.

Workneh, 32, went to a casino for the first time in 2012 and began to play blackjack, losing $60,000 of his family’s money and $43,000 in credit card advances, the appeals court said in its March 24 ruling.

He then began to gamble with money he stole from the Travis Finance Area Cashier Vault, the court said. Workneh was a deputy disbursement officer and had access to the vault, where he took a total of $150,000.

He first took $5,000 and quickly lost it, the court said.

“Desperate to gain back his losses,” Workneh began issuing U.S. Treasury checks at the Armed Forces Bank at Travis Air Force Base to get more money to gamble, according to the court. He used this scheme to obtain $240,000 in government funds.

After losing more than $100,000 over a few days, Workneh bought a plane ticket to his home country of Ethiopia to see his family before he went to jail, the court recounted. He wrote a letter to his commander apologizing for the thefts, and in a message to the bank, said he was sorry for lying about the reason he obtained the money, the court said.

Workneh remained absent without leave for about six weeks before voluntarily returning to the U.S. He was convicted of unauthorized absence, larceny and bank fraud in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The appeal the court ruled on last week included Workneh’s assertion that the military judge abused his discretion when he accepted guilty pleas without asking whether Workneh’s gambling addiction made him unable to appreciate the nature of his actions or their wrongfulness.

“While there is no doubt appellant had a gambling problem,” the March 24 decision states, “there is no record that a gambling addiction could or did render him unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts.”

“Appellant repeatedly stated that he had no legal justifications or excuse for his actions, that his conduct was wrong, that he could have avoided engaging in the criminal conduct and that no one forced him to commit the offenses,” the court added.

Workneh said of the bank fraud that, “I knew it was wrong each time, yet I returned for more money once I had lost it,” the court noted.

The appeals court did direct that a date be included for Workneh to pay a $42,000 fine or face two additional years of confinement.

He is serving his sentence at the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina.

Reach Ryan McCarthy at 427-6935 or [email protected].