A former Pulaski County employee who faces several counts of insurance fraud and theft was granted a repeat mental evaluation Monday after a recently completed one found she did not lack capacity at the time of the crimes.
Wanda Wyatt, the county's former fleet records clerk, was arrested last summer on 153 charges of theft and fraud spanning 2010 to 2016. She is accused of stealing nearly $250,000 from the county's insurance provider, Central Arkansas Risk Management Association. She had been a county employee for 17 years.
Wyatt, 60, underwent a mental exam in January at Little Rock Community Mental Health Center. Results determined she had the capacity to appreciate the criminality of her conduct and that she had no mental disease or defect.
However, on Monday, Wyatt's attorney argued before Circuit Judge Leon Johnson that the evaluation did not address a possible gambling disorder.
"It seems like we should be able to explore this with a state expert," Public Defender Llewellyn Marczuk said.
In the initial examination report, Wyatt explained the nature of her crimes to a clinical psychologist and how she had taken advantage of her position as a fleet records clerk to create false insurance claims and deposit insurance money into her personal bank account.
"I was over insurance claims for all the vehicles in the county," Wyatt said in the report. "If there was an accident, I would do those claims. I got too brave and started doing claims in other people's names and deposited it in my bank account even though they were in other people's names."
Marczuk said a gambling addiction should be evaluated when considering Wyatt's mental state at the time of the crimes and argued that the possibility was ignored by the clinical psychologist.
"I don't think that's normally a thing that would render a person unable to appreciate [the criminality of her conduct]," prosecutor Tonia Acker said.
Johnson granted until May 8 for a repeat evaluation.
Wyatt was arrested June 21 after admitting to investigators that she took part in an insurance-reporting scheme, according to an arrest report. She had been held in the Pulaski County jail on 73 felony counts of theft and 80 felony counts of computer fraud.
Metro on 03/15/2017