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Lavley pleads not guilty to embezzlement [1]
['Jane Braxton Little']
Date: 2024-04-17
Cassandra Beth Lavley, a dispatcher with the Plumas County Sheriff’s Office, appeared in Plumas County Superior Court April 16 on three felony charges that including embezzling from a fund providing Christmas gifts for children in need.
Lavley, 39, pleaded not guilty.
Judge Janet Hilde released her from custody on her own recognizance and ordered Lavley to appear in court at 9 a.m. May 3 for a pre-preliminary hearing. Hilde had appointed Quincy attorney Jude Koenig to defend Lavley during her April 15 arraignment hearing, which was continued to April 16. The judge ordered Lavley not to take any employment involving fiduciary responsibilities.
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Lavley was arrested April 11 and, until April 16, held in custody in Lassen County in lieu of a $50,000 bond.
Plumas County Assistant District Attorney Graham Archer charged Lavley with two counts of embezzlement and one count of fraudulent alteration of books. All three are felonies.
The alleged crimes took place between Jan. 1, 2022, and Nov. 21, 2023, and involve Lavley in her capacity as the secretary/treasurer of the Plumas County Sheriff’s Employee’s Association, according to Archer’s complaint. Filed April 11 in Plumas County Superior Court, it alleges that Lavley embezzled over $20,000 from the association’s general account and the needy children account, used to provide local kids with Christmas gifts. The complaint also alleges that Lavley altered the accounts and documents kept by the employee’s association.
In his lengthy statement of probable cause, Archer describes a statewide conference, held in Anaheim in November 2023, for sheriff’s employees. Lavley attended with Chandler Peay, a Plumas County sheriff’s deputy and current president of the employee association. When Peay noticed that Lavley’s expenses were far higher than his, he began investigating.
He discovered that Lavley used the association’s American Express credit card to pay for airfare, Disneyland tickets and “character breakfasts” for her family. Peay also found hotel charges at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas in March 2023 — as well as at the Silver Legacy in Reno at the time of a Jo Koy comedy show at the Reno Events Center — also charged to the employee association account. None of these charges were authorized as association expenses, according to the complaint.
When confronted about the charges Nov. 20, 2023, Lavley claimed they were a mistake. She resigned as the employee’s association’s secretary/treasurer and wrote the association a check for $2,958.89 on Nov. 21, 2023.
Peay’s further investigation of the association’s finances found “unusual charges” to both the association’s main and needy children’s accounts. Among them were “a high volume” of debit transactions to accounts with Costco and Amazon.
After obtaining search warrants, Archer and Peay discovered more than $19,000 in unauthorized transactions made from the association’s Amazon account. They included payments for an ASUS Chromebook laptop, Inofia queen mattress, two TVs, a faux cowhide rug and Sun Bum SPF 50 sunscreen, the complaint states.
The investigation also found over $2,000 in charges to Costco for items that included clothing, frozen fruit, beer, wine, liquor, flowers, melatonin and a rotisserie chicken. Some of these items were identified in social media postings of photographs taken in Lavley’s daughter’s residence in Chico, according to the complaint.
Fraudulent charges made to the Plumas County Employee’s Association main and needy children accounts are the basis for the two felony embezzlement charges.
Archer also discovered that Lavley “miscategorized” some purchases in the association’s accounts. She falsely attributed expenses as stocking for the association’s vending machine or the needy children’s account, he said. That is the basis for his third felony charge: falsification of corporate documents.
Lavley was placed on administrative leave Nov. 21, 2023. Her next scheduled court appearance is May 3.
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[1] Url:
https://plumassun.org/2024/04/17/lavley-pleads-not-guilty-to-embezzlement/
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