Washington Lottery: Bookkeeper's lottery habit costly
A Federal Way, Washington woman convicted of embezzling from a Monroe trust fund was sentenced to pay back what she stole, in $100 monthly installments.
That means Dorothy L. Weber, 68, should be clear of her roughly $488,000 debt (plus about $61,000 in expenses) by early 2462.
Weber was also sentenced to 14 months in prison for embezzling from the Northwest Sheet Metal Workers Organizational Trust for more than three years.
Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wynne on Wednesday imposed the maximum term under state law for Weber's first-degree theft convictions.
Deputy prosecutor Halley Hupp asked for the maximum term after Weber pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree theft.
Defense attorney Rafael Schwimmer said Weber has a mental disorder, but conceded that it wasn't serious enough to keep her from knowing that she was committing a crime.
Weber used the embezzled money to play the lottery. She kept playing in the hope that she would win and could pay back the trust, perhaps with a little left over for herself, Schwimmer said.
Weber said she's willing to pay the consequences for her actions. She said the thefts were "out of character" for her and offered her "sincere apologies" for what she did.
Weber was the trust's office manager and bookkeeper from 1992 to 2003, when the thefts were discovered. She had complete control of the organization's checking account and bank and business records, according to court documents.
She illegally made a large number of checks payable to herself. The checks were processed by a bank even though they didn't have the required two signatures, documents said.
Neither the trust's executive director, Dwight Nelson, nor the trust's attorney, Greg Petrie, would say how much money is in the trust, which is used to promote the sheet metal industry in Washington.
The thefts didn't crimp the organization, they said.
"Obviously, it's a significant amount of money," Petrie said. "We were fortunate it was insured."