"I am willing to surrender to the U.S. authorities, but I refuse to acknowledge my guilt and I am hoping that I will be returned home," Vladimir Kuznetsov said, adding that his lawyers had given official notice of his appeal, and would be putting forward new defense arguments.
Kuznetsov, 49, who worked as a Russian expert in the United Nations Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, was arrested in September 2005 after borrowing $300,000 from a Russian colleague, allegedly knowing that the funds had been acquired by criminal means.
Kuznetsov previously held diplomatic immunity as a UN employee, but after former secretary general Kofi Annan revoked the status, the FBI were able to arrest him.
He has spent the last two years under house arrest in a rented New York apartment.
The ex-diplomat was sentenced earlier this month by a U.S. district court, and ordered to pay a total of $73,000 in fines.
The Russian Foreign Ministry earlier expressed disappointment with the U.S. court ruling and said it might ask the U.S. government to return Kuznetsov to Russia under the convention on the transfer of convicts.
