An Oklahoma City woman who pleaded no contest for embezzlement was ordered Monday to pay more than $170,000 in restitution and serve a split sentence of two years in prison, eight years out.
District Judge Thad Balkman also ordered the woman remain on supervised probation for one year following her imprisonment.
Rebecca Lorene Ray, 43, was originally charged with embezzlement in January 2012 after owners of Millennium Roofing found out she was making unauthorized purchases with a company credit card.
A liquor store, a casino, a boat marina and convenient stores were some of the locations the owners discovered Ray had swiped the company card, court records show. She used the card after she was no longer employed there, telling law enforcement those purchases were treated as advances for supplement, or commission checks, as part of her job.
An affidavit filed with the 2012 charge shows Ray made unauthorized purchases with the company card totaling to approximately $26,000.
The owners later found out Ray also had forged the owners’ names on business checks and would either change the payee names or delete checks in their Quickbooks program to avoid detection, the affidavit shows.
The unauthorized payments made to herself and others through the company checks came to a total of approximately $60,000 according to the affidavit. Testimony on Monday indicated that Ray stole more than $100,000 from the company while she worked there as an office manager.
Felony information filed states the embezzlement occurred between December 2009 and June 2011.
Ray’s testimony Monday was that she was not trained properly to handle certain duties, such as bookkeeping, but was assigned the task after the two owners fired one of their partners. She testified that she changed the payee names on checks and deleted checks in QuickBooks at the request of the owners to reduce the amount of taxable income.
The affidavit states Ray admitted to signing the owners’ names on checks but did it out of necessity when they were not in the office.
After Ray testified that she had tons of employers say she was a good employee, Assistant District Attorney Zack Simmons questioned her about numerous jobs in which employers had accused her of theft, which often led to her either quitting or being fired.
According to her testimony, all of those employers were lying.
Ray has no prior criminal history, but because she had engaged in an alleged continuous pattern of this behavior, Balkman said there was a moderate risk that she would reoffend. Evidence also showed that Ray had a “lack of remorse” and instead of taking responsibility for her actions, she pointed a finger at others.
“This is a person that over the past several years has victimized businesses, and ultimately customers, as the judge said, and for the most part has gotten away with it over the past several years,” Simmons said. “The owners of Millennium Roofing decided to take a stand against her and follow through with this case to make sure she was held accountable.”
Simmons said he hopes Ray learned something from the case and the victims are somehow made whole again.
Assistant District Attorney Dane Towery also was a prosecutor for the case. Attorney Steve Parker represented Ray.
Original article can be found here: http://www.normantranscript.com
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