BATON ROUGE - Federal prosecutors say a former vice president for the health services company Amedisys has been sentenced to four years in prison for a wire fraud scheme that put more than $7.6 million of the company's money in his personal bank accounts.

U.S. Attorney Walt Green said in a news release Judge John deGravelles handed down the sentence Wednesday for 41-year-old Michael David Pitts.

Pitts was vice president of the tax unit at the home-health and hospice services firm when he defrauded the company through a complex scheme of shell entities and fictitious tax credits.

The U.S. Attorney's Office charged Pitts with wire fraud in March. The former Amedisys official pleaded guilty.