Former Buffalo Bills employee Bonnie Krauss, who had been indicted for stealing more than $70,000 from the team, was spared a jail term Friday by a Buffalo judge. But she was ordered to perform 100 hours of community service while she is on supervised probation in California for the next five years.

Krauss, 50, was told by State Supreme Court Justice M. William Boller he found the prison term of up to seven years she had been facing unnecessary to protect the public from her, but he couldn’t just impose a monetary fine even though she has fully repaid the team.

“Only you can tell yourself why you got involved in this,” the judge told Krauss, who moved with her ailing husband to Corona, Calif., last year after the Bills fired her from an administrative assistant post in the team’s marketing and broadcasting department.

Krauss, a former Gowanda resident, was placed on probation for the next five years under the supervision of the Riverside County, Calif., Probation Department. The judge also ordered her to remain gainfully employed and submit to any professional counseling or treatment ordered by probation officers.

Krauss, who did not speak during or after the sentencing proceeding, had been indicted months ago by an Erie County grand jury on a second-degree grand larceny charge but was allowed to plead guilty Sept. 8 to third-degree grand larceny.

John C. Doscher, chief of the Erie County District Attorney’s Special Investigations Bureau, said that at the plea proceeding, Krauss fully repaid the $70,382 she stole from the club by illegally using team credit cards while working in its marketing and broadcasting department.

Joel L. Daniels, Krauss’ attorney, said he personally turned over the check in the downtown courtroom four months ago to Bills corporate counsel Michael Schiavone.

Boller told Krauss she is in need of professional guidance and ordered her to remain drug-and alcohol-free for the next five years, undergo substance abuse testing and treatment if ordered and pay for any testing and submit to warrantless searches by California probation officials. He also ordered her to pay $375 in New York State court fees.

The judge cited Krauss’ otherwise stellar record of behavior through the years and the fact that she has already made full restitution to the Bills.

Doscher said an internal audit by the football team within the last year uncovered Krauss’ systematic misuse of team credit accounts for personal expenses at least as far back as December 2003, which lead to her dismissal.

According to public records, Krauss and her husband, formerly of Maltbie Road, Gowanda, declared bankruptcy in February 2008. It was the second bankruptcy for them in a decade.