A federal jury trial scheduled to begin last week for Seanta L. Hammonds of North Little Rock, who is accused of bank fraud, has been rescheduled to begin Nov. 16 after Hammonds tested positive for covid-19.
Hammonds was indicted April 3, 2019. She is accused of using her position as operations coordinator for Children's Advocacy Centers of Arkansas, a nonprofit organization, to issue 39 unauthorized checks totaling $65,846.05 to herself between October of 2017 and October of 2018.
Her indictment says her duties included bookkeeping, making bank deposits and general office-manager duties, which gave her access to the center's QuickBooks account.
It alleges she used the program to generate checks made payable to herself to which she wasn't entitled, then printed the checks and forged the signature of an authorized signatory on the center's Regions Bank account without the signatory's knowledge.
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It says she cashed one of the fraudulent checks and deposited the others into her personal bank account, then deleted the unauthorized checks in the QuickBooks program to avoid detection.
The indictment doesn't say how the fraud was discovered.
On July 27, a week before her trial was to begin before U.S. District Judge James Moody, defense attorney Christian Alexander of Jacksonville filed a motion stating that Hammonds had tested positive for covid-19 and had to be quarantined for 14 days. On July 31, Moody rescheduled the trial.
In the fall of 2019, Hammonds reportedly filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy.