Editor’s note: This commentary is by Don Keelan, a retired certified public accountant and resident of Arlington.
Judge David C. Norton may be a long way from Vermont when presiding as the U.S. District Court judge in Charleston, South Carolina. According to NewsObserver.com, the judge did not mince words when earlier this year he rendered a sentence in what was South Carolina’s largest ever embezzlement case.
According to published reports, Brantley Thomas the former chief financial officer of the Berkeley County School District, spanning a 16-year period, stole over $1.2 million. Norton sentenced Thomas to 63 months in federal prison and to make restitution of $1,232,106 to the school district.
The judge went on to note that Thomas, and others who steal, have “OPM Addition” — the taking of “Other People’s Money.” The state of South Carolina did not think anything less of Thomas’ crime and placed an additional sentence of nearly five more years in prison. The 61-year-old Thomas will have a difficult time making restitution.
According to an online summary of Vermont criminal law, specifically, Title 13, Chapter 57 (Larceny and Embezzlement): “If the money or property embezzled exceeds $100 in value, the person shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years or fined not more than $10,000, or both.” The statute might have just as well been adopted for the inhabitants on Mars for all its relevancy in Vermont.
As I have noted in this column in the past 16 years, the most lucrative way to make money in Vermont is to embezzle it. It is a truism today as it has been for years; the above-noted statute is, for the most part, ignored.
For many who engage or have engaged in embezzlement, it is an addiction and the courts should deal with those who have the addiction. Is full restitution, a long prison sentence and income tax recovery the proper way to deal with convicted embezzlers?
Several recent Vermont cases are noteworthy. According to an Oct. 22 VTDigger article, a former Vermont state tax examiner pleaded guilty to embezzling just over $15,000 from the tax department. The sentence handed out — 90 days of home confinement — was not anywhere near the maximum 10 years in prison noted in the criminal statute. I should note that the defendant’s physical health (pregnancy) was a factor. There was no indication if income tax evasion charges were filed.
The recent guilty plea by the defendant in a $2.2 million embezzlement in Lyndonville (dwarfs the South Carolina case) comes up for sentencing in February. Up to now the only restitution that has been made was the confiscation of some motor vehicles. This case had also spanned a long period of time, 10 years or more. The income taxes due on the ill-gotten gains alone amount to over a quarter million dollars.
It is not my prerogative to interfere in what the federal court will decide what sentence to give the defendant in the Lyndonville theft. However, one thing is clear to me when it comes to the sentencing of those convicted of embezzlement in Vermont – it does not recognize the impact of the crime.
Embezzlement is committed quite frequently, especially against small municipalities, businesses and nonprofits. Past punishments don’t come anywhere near what is in the statute. If embezzlement is determined to be an addiction, then let’s deal with it as such.
Vermont has been overwhelmed physically, emotionally and financially in having to deal with drug addiction, alcohol and gambling addiction (the latter is what most of the funds were used for in the Lyndonville case) and, most recently, videogames addiction.
If Judge Norton is correct in his findings, that embezzlement is an addiction to stealing other people’s money, it needs to be addressed. ABC reporter Jenny Peterson goes on to note that Thomas, while awaiting sentencing in the South Carolina school district theft, took a position with a Charleston eye vision center. He has been accused of stealing $37,655 from the center.
