Inside thief repays city $245,000

VAN BUREN -- Former Cedarville Recorder-Treasurer Alicson Reding handed over a check for $245,000 minutes before pleading guilty Wednesday to a theft charge accusing her of stealing city money starting in 2008.

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Reding, 37, pleaded guilty in Crawford County Circuit Court to one count of theft and was placed on probation for 20 years.

Special prosecutor Jack McQuary said part of a plea agreement with Reding included dismissing six other theft counts she originally drew. He said after the court session that he would not have agreed to probation for Reding unless she could make a substantial restitution payment.

"The state's main concern is always to get the people's money back, then worry about punishment," McQuary said.

Reding served as an unpaid recorder-treasurer in Cedarville from 2003 until April 2014, when the thefts were uncovered. Cedarville Mayor Glenanna O'Mara said none of the city's elected officials has traditionally taken payment for serving the city, including the recorder-treasurer.

"I'm glad to see this finally come to an end," O'Mara said Wednesday. She said the revelation that "someone in our midst took from the city" puts its 1,394 residents through a time of stress.

McQuary told Circuit Judge Gary Cottrell that state auditors had determined that Reding took $295,879.85 of Cedarville's money from 2008 to April 2014 and used it for her own purposes.

According to the plea agreement, he said, Reding will repay the all money she stole from Cedarville plus the $28,760 cost of an audit by the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee, a $1,000 fine and $170 in court costs, at a rate of $350 a month. At that rate, it will take more than 19 years to pay off the debt.

McQuary said after court that he believes that Reding's family had assisted in raising the $245,000 but didn't have details on who in the family had provided the money.

Reding's attorney, Jered Medlock of Fort Smith, would not say how Reding came up with the payment. He said the money had been deposited into a trust account for some time to provide leverage with which to negotiate a plea deal.

He said, however, that the money did not come from an insurance payment from a January fire that destroyed Reding's home in Cedarville. He said the house was not insured.

Medlock said Reding has a job working in a family business and will be able to make her monthly restitution payments. Information she provided the court in the criminal file showed she was employed at C and C Catfish in Van Buren.

Arkansas secretary of state records show that Alicson and Brian Reding also have a corporation called Pyle and Reding Inc. with Beverly and William Pyle.

Beverly Pyle, Alicson Reding's mother, is the Crawford County treasurer and served as state representative for District 83 from 2005 to 2011.

An employee in the treasurer's office at the courthouse Wednesday said Beverly Pyle was in Little Rock attending meetings. The employee said he would contact her with a message that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette sought comment on Reding's plea, but she did not respond.

O'Mara said city officials haven't decided what to do with the restitution money. They had not been part of the negotiations and didn't have an idea until Wednesday's plea how much money would come from disposition of the case.

Embezzled money originally destined for a particular city account may have to be returned to and spent from that account, she said. What money goes where still has to be determined, and it will take time to sort that out, she added.

O'Mara said the city's general-fund budget for this year totals $170,205. The street budget is $119,528.

She said the city doesn't have much tax income, relying mostly on property tax, state turnback funds and whatever grants are obtainable.

She said the city has had a hard time paying the bills the past seven years. O'Mara remembered the struggles officials had trying to come up with money for things like forming a new fire department, paying the police chief a decent wage and keeping the city's 15 miles of dirt roads in repair.

Arkansas State Police search-warrant affidavits show that the criminal investigation began after auditors found irregularities in Cedarville's financial records.

According to the affidavits, Reding at one point diverted nearly $5,000 to pay taxes on a business she owned. The investigation also showed that on several occasions she or a purported school benefit program received or diverted payments from Cedarville, claiming the funds were for work or products benefiting the town.

The invoices or work orders for which the money was purportedly spent were missing, altered or never existed, the affidavits said.

O'Mara said Reding was able to conceal the thefts from city officials because only Reding handled the city's finances, some of the records for which were stored at her home. Officials didn't see the money coming and going, and auditors didn't pick up on the thefts for years.

"It was down under the radar completely," she said.

City officials began instituting a new financial system for Cedarville the day after they learned of Reding's thefts, O'Mara said. She said all of the city's bank accounts were closed, and new ones were opened. New guidelines were put in place.

"We wanted to be sure what we did was correct so we did not have any loopholes," she said.

For example, she said it now takes three people to review every bill and document.

"We're giving it our best shot," she said.

A Section on 03/19/2015

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