Sheriff’s office worker steals $150,000 in cash from traffic fine payments, feds say
.jpg "A Louisiana sheriff’s office employee stole thousands of dollars paid toward traffic tickets, feds say.")
A woman in charge of collecting traffic ticket payments for a Louisiana sheriff’s office was caught stealing cash, federal prosecutors said.
The case dates back to when she worked as the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office’s traffic administrator from July 2018 to September 2022, court documents show. She no longer works for the office, officials said.
During this time, the woman, of Baton Rouge, stole more than $150,000 worth of fines paid toward traffic violations, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Louisiana.
The 44-year-old woman is now facing a charge of federal program theft, the attorney’s office announced in a May 11 news release.
McClatchy News contacted the woman’s attorney for comment on May 11 and didn’t immediately receive a response.
The woman was tasked with entering traffic tickets into the sheriff’s office traffic ticket management software and preparing cash deposits after collecting payments as the traffic administrator, according to court documents.
She hid how she was stealing some of the payments for nearly four years by lying and recording the traffic tickets as having been fully paid, a bill of information filed in court shows. Additionally, she wrote down fake journal entries in the accounting system, according to the document.
In April 2022, she collected traffic ticket payments totaling more than $19,000 for the month, but she only deposited about $10,000 in the sheriff’s office bank account, the bill of information says.
If the woman is convicted, she could be ordered to forfeit all the stolen money, or anything she bought with the money, to the government, according to prosecutors.
This story was originally published May 11, 2023 at 1:14 PM with the headline "Sheriff’s office worker steals $150,000 in cash from traffic fine payments, feds say."
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