POCATELLO, Idaho (AP) - A Chubbuck woman has been sentenced to five months in prison and five months of home detention for embezzling nearly $83,000 from clients of a Pocatello homeless shelter, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Barbara E. Waters, 61, was sentenced Monday and ordered to pay over $88,000 in restitution, including investigative costs incurred by Aid For Friends.
Waters was the manager of the shelter’s representative payee program, where the Social Security Administration sends payments for beneficiaries using services at Aid For Friends. The shelter administers the funds and pays for the beneficiary’s personal expenses.
Waters pleaded guilty in August to theft of government money, saying that from January 2006 to December 2010 she wrote checks on the trust account for her personal expenses.
Her former assistant, Leslie A. Briggs, was sentenced in June to nearly two years in prison for theft of government money. She also was ordered to pay nearly $104,000 in restitution for thefts that took place between November 2008 and December 2010. Briggs, 36, had two previous embezzlement convictions.
The shelter put new procedures in place to enhance the security of the payees’ funds, officials said last September.
Aid For Friends board Chairman Scott Heide said Monday the new procedures recently paid off when another employee was caught stealing.
An investigation found Mindi Etcheverry took $2,400 from the trust account in early October while she was the manager of the fund, Heide said. He said Etcheverry cooperated with the investigation, has repaid $2,100 and has plans to repay the rest. She has pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor petty theft.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.