A federal judge in Texarkana on Friday sentenced former Lafayette County Treasurer and Tax Collector Keesha Rose to 24 months in prison and ordered her to pay more than $282,000 restitution for stealing county and federal money while in office.
Rose, 37, of Lewisville pleaded guilty Oct. 29 to one count of theft of government funds for taking a $10,000 federal grant and using the money for personal purposes.
Lafayette County Judge Mike Rowe said Friday that most of the money Rose was accused of stealing was county tax money her office collected but that she never deposited in the bank. He said the state Division of Legislative Audit determined that Rose took a total of $367,553.70, but $85,516.73 in checks could not be accounted for and were not included in the computation for her restitution.
U.S. District Judge Harry F. Barnes ordered Rose to pay $282,036.97 restitution. She remained free on bond Friday and is scheduled to report to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons on April 29, according to a summary of the sentencing hearing.
"The defendant shall not participate in any form of gambling unless payment of any financial obligation ordered by the court has been paid in full," a portion of the summary stated.
The summary also said she should comply with the probation office's instructions to comply with all referrals for substance abuse or mental health counseling or treatment.
Rowe, who attended Friday's sentencing, said Barnes made it clear that Rose was to stay away from casinos and could not even buy lottery tickets.
The U.S. attorney's office would not comment Friday on whether gambling was a motive in the thefts.
Rose's plea agreement with the government, which set out facts the government could produce against her, stated there was "evidence showing the expenditure of large amounts of unexplained money by Keesha Rose during the time that the county funds were embezzled."
Her attorney, Jeff Harrelson of Texarkana, said in October that after he and Rose "reviewed all of the documents in the case, we agreed that it was in her best interest to enter a guilty plea" instead of going to trial.
Rowe said Barnes ordered Rose to pay 10 percent of the income she received while in prison and 10 percent of her net income after her release toward her restitution obligation.
Rowe said he expected Rose's public official bond to reimburse the county for most of the money she took. State auditors will have to determine how the county may spend the money based on the various accounts to which it was destined before it was stolen, he said.
More difficult for the county to recover, he said, was the time officials spent dealing with the thefts since they were first detected almost two years ago. He said his predecessor's time in the county judge's office was consumed with problems associated with the thefts.
The thefts also have cost county officials the trust of residents.
"It will be difficult to get back the trust of the people of the county," Rowe said. "The harm that is done when something like this happens is hard to overcome."
Restoring trust in the treasurer/collector position was on Democrat Gayle Teague's mind when she was elected last year and took over the office in January. She said she was eager to take office.
She said she had worked in the treasurer's office in Lafayette County for about 10 years in the 1980s and for 23 years as district court clerk in Stamps.
"I wanted to get in here to honestly do a job and make the county look good again," she said.
Rowe's administrative assistant, Patty Reich, said Friday that after Rose's plea to the federal theft charge, she was barred from the courthouse but could continue managing the office by phone. She said Rose resigned from office Nov. 11.
Rose's husband, Victor Rose, was sheriff of Lafayette County but did not run for re-election in November.
Rose was elected to county treasurer/collector in November 2010 and took office Jan. 1, 2011.
State auditors reported that on May 31, 2013, receipts for bank deposits of county tax money showed that $162,275 was not deposited in the county bank account from Jan. 1, 2011, to Sept. 20, 2012, according to the plea agreement.
Another $81,618 was discovered missing from Sept. 20, 2012, to Nov. 7, 2013.
A news release from the U.S. attorney's office Friday said investigators found Rose had embezzled $38,143.97 more from Nov. 7, 2013, to April 30, 2014, that had not been uncovered at the time of her Oct. 29 guilty plea.
The embezzlement was uncovered when auditors discovered irregularities in the record keeping in Rose's office, according to Rose's plea agreement.
It said Rose failed to maintain copies of deposit slips for money taken in by the collector and deposited in the collector's account before supposedly being transferred by check to the treasurer's account. Without the slips, auditors could not check transactions between the two accounts.
They found one slip, according to the plea agreement. It showed a $2,523.17 deposit in the treasurer's bank account but when compared with the slip on file at the bank, no cash was actually deposited.
Rose also hid stolen tax money from detection by depositing timely made tax payments -- including large payments from utility companies -- into the collector's delinquent account and listing them as delinquent in the records. When time came to publish the list of delinquent taxpayers in the local newspaper, the plea agreement said, she deleted those who had paid their taxes on time from the list.
"This was done to prevent undue notoriety to these taxpayers," the plea agreement said.
NW News on 03/21/2015