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Last updated on Monday, November 2, 2015
(BEDFORD) - The former treasurer of Little Theatre of Bedford was ordered to repay more than $12,000 that she stole from the organization.
Superior Court II Judge William Sleva ordered 40-year-old Cheri Barnes of Shoals to pay $12,356.86 in restitution after she pleaded guilty to forging checks and stealing money from the organization.
She was ordered to serve four years on supervised probation on a Class C felony charge of forgery and three years on supervised probation a Class D theft charge. The sentences will be served concurrently.
According to a probable cause affidavit, an audit of the Little Theatre Bedford accounts showed that from 2011 to 2014 more than 150 checks were written, but 99 of those were fraudulent totaling $17,356.86.
When Bedford Police detectives confronted Barnes she turned in incomplete records and there were missing pages of cashed checks from the account. Some of the checks were made out to cash or to Barnes which she claimed were expenditures or theatre expenses.
During a second interview, Barnes admitted she had used the funds for personal use. She also admitted to forging the previous treasurer's signature onto those checks. She also provided police with a copy of a check where she had wrote a check from her personal account in 2013 to reimburse the theater $5,000, leaving the balance she stole $12,356.86.
She was arrested on April 28 after a warrant was issued for her arrest.
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