Stacy Jenson, who went from being a felon in the 1990s to a sports agent representing several big-name Green Bay Packers, was charged Tuesday with 17 counts of fraud on allegations that she stole more than $1.9 million largely from a New Berlin company where she worked.

According to a federal indictment, Jenson organised a scheme to finance her now-defunct Elite Sports and Public Relations, which represented a number of professional athletes, including Greg Jennings and Javon Walker of the Packers, using funds from IEWC Global Solutions, where she worked as the company’s event planner. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported Jenson was being investigated by the FBI in April 2012.

Elite Sports did not negotiate contracts between players and teams. Rather, agents such as Jenson are hired to boost a player’s image and land endorsement deals.

According to the indictment, Jenson’s scheme began in January 2009 and ran until March 2012, or roughly seven months after she quit the company but was still permitted to keep her corporate credit card.

According to the indictment, “… Jenson convinced IEWC to keep a high credit limit and to leave open one of the credit cards she had used without authorization when IEWC tried to be reimbursed for her unauthorised credit card charges.” Jenson allegedly tried to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars more in unauthorised charges to Titletown Tickets, a ticket broker in Green Bay, on their IEWC credit card account while feigning to be trying to get the account credited.

Daniel Stiller, Jenson’s federal public defender, said he did not know why Jenson was permitted to keep the credit card after leaving the company.

“That’s a question most properly asked of the corporation,” Stiller said.

In an email, an IEWC representative stated that the company “would not get into the mechanics of internal controls past or present.” In an email statement, Philip Harris, IEWC enterprise risk director, said that “at the time the issue was discovered IEWC addressed the matter internally, through an aggressive audit process and short- and long-term initiatives focused on strengthening our internal controls.”

Since the problems were first discovered, two officials in the company’s controller’s office have left the firm, sources said.

Bill Wenzel, Titletown owner, said his company did business with IEWC through Jenson for several years. Wenzel claimed that every time Jenson purchased tickets from his company, she did so with a “valid credit card.”

Though he is not suspected of wrongdoing, Wenzel said the Jenson investigation resulted in the federal government seizing about $50,000 from his company. He also had to pay $50,000 in legal expenses.

According to assistant U.S. attorney Stephen Ingraham, who is prosecuting Jenson, Titletown forfeited the funds to the government because the company’s “account held money that was attributable to the fraud offence.”

When Jenson was profiled by The Journal Sentinel in March 2012, it was noted that a significant portion of the public and a number of her Elite Sports clients were ignorant of her criminal history, which included convictions for over a dozen felonies and misdemeanours in the early 1990s.

Jenson, 50, the daughter of a Milwaukee police detective, was found guilty of stealing from a south side Catholic church, papering the Milwaukee area with bad checks, and conniving a suburban high school pompon squad.

She is accused of wire, mail, and credit card fraud in the federal indictment that was released on Tuesday. The indictment alleges that:

Operating with “minimal company oversight,” IEWC would give Jenson checks to pay for company events. But Jenson would then sometimes cash the checks or deposit them in her account. “Jenson paid for Elite Sports expenses or personal expenses with the approximately $477,000 that was stolen.”

While operating Elite Sports, Jenson used several of the same vendors that IEWC used. She charged about $346,000 on two IEWC credit cards to cover Elite Sports expenses.

Jenson provided IEWC staff with tickets to Packers games that she said she obtained from players. She also arranged for staff to either fly to the games or ride luxury buses to the game sites, which she claimed “to provide free due to the money she made at Elite Sports.” Actually, the indictment charged, she used IEWC credit cards to pay for the tickets and transportation.

She obtained a $68,000 loan in March 2012 from a Green Bay man identified in the indictment as W.D.W. to assist her in carrying out her scheme to defraud IEWC.

Stiller, Jenson’s public defender, said she would plead not guilty to the charges and they would then prepare for trial.

Jenson, who now lives in Waterford, spent about two years at Taycheedah Correctional Institution and two years in less secure facilities and house arrest before being paroled in 1996.

Since re-entering the business world her career was marked by bitter business disputes, criminal investigations and lawsuits filed by the Packers, Milwaukee Brewers and Johnson Bank.

Jenson ran into controversy earlier in 2012 when she was engaged in a dispute with a Waukesha woman who said she had paid $12,000 for a trip on the Packers’ team plane to a road game in an auction overseen by Jenson for the Greg Jennings Foundation. But the woman, Michelle Maciosek, said Jenson never arranged the trip and failed to return her money.

Courtroom fights continued to dog Jenson throughout 2012 and 2013. She was ordered in Milwaukee County Court to pay Scott Jenson, her ex-husband, $99,803 after he sued her, charging she owed him the money.

The Milwaukee law firm of Gimbel Reilly Guerin & Brown sued her for legal fees it said she owed. A court ordered Jenson and Elite Sports to pay the Gimbel firm $50,051.

Jenson was born Stacy Foote; Jenson was her married name. She changed her name back to Stacy Foote last year.