A 35-year-old Sherwood woman has been sentenced to six years of probation for stealing more than $15,000 from her former employer, a Jacksonville retirement and assisted-living home.
Kimberly Dawn Williams stole the money from the 100-unit, nine-story Jacksonville Towers at 200 S. Hospital Blvd. over about 16 months, from Oct. 21, 2013, through March 19, 2015, when another employee discovered a questionable transfer of $7,300, court filings show. The records don't say what job Williams had with the company.
The company reported the theft to police in May 2015, and Williams confessed in an August interview with detectives, about a month before she was arrested at her Almond Cove home, court records show.
She pleaded guilty to the Class C felony offense last month in exchange for prosecutors not making a sentencing recommendation to Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza.
A first-time offender, Williams faced up to 10 years in prison. Piazza sentenced her to probation Tuesday on the condition that she stay employed and pay the money back at $220 per month beginning in July.
As a first-time offender, if she completes probation without getting into trouble with the law again, she can have her record expunged.
She apologized in a letter to the judge.
"I am asking for mercy," she wrote. "I made bad choices, and I am so sorry for everything that I have put my job and my kids through. I will never do anything like this again."
At sentencing, her attorney, Rick Holiman, requested probation, saying the divorced mother of two has significant health issues but is employed and wants to pay the money back.
The judge said he was imposing probation because the victims want their money back.
In his experience, he said, such arrangements typically don't work out because the defendant can't repay the money or steals again from someone else to pay the restitution.
In her interview with police, Williams said she was rebuffed by the company when she offered to sign a payment agreement to reimburse the facility, which is owned by Florida-based Elderly Housing Development & Operations Corp., court filings show.
She told detective Marvin Kelley that "personal issues" caused her to have financial problems that led to her taking money from her employer.
Metro on 05/27/2016