A self-employed accountant who was elected treasurer of Elizabeth Scott Elementary School’s PTA pleaded guilty Thursday to embezzling $24,500 from the organization after earlier skipping her trial and fleeing to North Carolina.
After accepting her plea in Chesterfield County Circuit Court, Judge David E. Johnson sentenced Jessica L. Yeakey, 42, of Chester, to five years in prison with four years and nine months suspended, giving her three months to serve. The punishment exceeded discretionary sentencing guidelines, which called for probation and no incarceration.
Yeakey’s conviction this week came more than a year after she was declared a fugitive for skipping her Dec. 11, 2017, embezzlement trial. That proceeding had been rescheduled for Jan. 25, 2018, but she skipped a second time, said Chesterfield Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert J. Fierro Jr.
Authorities learned she traveled to North Carolina in January and entered a substance abuse recovery program in that state. She traveled back to the Richmond area Dec. 6 and was arrested by Richmond police on the warrant issued for her arrest for skipping trial.
Yeakey testified Thursday that she returned to the Richmond area to turn herself in, but Fierro said he didn’t have any way to independently verify that.
According to a summary of the case, the Scott Elementary PTA recruited Yeakey to be their treasurer in August 2016 based on her self-employment as the operator of an accounting firm called Jessica Yeakey Bookkeeping Services. Her Facebook page advertising the business said she had more than 15 years of experience in private and public accounting.
Before Yeakey assumed the treasurer’s position, the PTA performed an audit of their accounts in July 2016, Fierro said. When the school year began, the organization held a series of fundraising events that continued through March 2017.
“The leadership of this PTA maintained some very strong accounting procedures, which involved multiple individuals counting and verifying monies and checks that had come in at various fundraising events,” Fierro said. These procedures were carried out before turning over the collected funds to Yeakey, he added.
“She was entrusted to hold the sums until they could be deposited [into] a specific account that had been set up for this PTA,” Fierro explained.
However, Yeakey failed to make deposits beginning in October 2016 and “she made no further deposits after that time,” the prosecutor said.
That continued until March 2017, when PTA officials were able to determine how much money Yeakey had taken and failed to deposit — $24,545.49, Fierro said.
The PTA had $17,000 in the bank in January 2017, but that balance dropped to $275 by March. “So essentially the PTA ran out of money,” he said.
After being confronted about the missing funds, Yeakey would skip and postpone meetings, Fierro said, and she ultimately presented fabricated reports to the PTA board.
An audit was conducted and a member of the PTA’s leadership committee met with Yeakey at her home March 15 to recover all PTA records and journals. She resigned a day later.
Yeakey initially was cooperative and turned over about $14,000 of the missing $24,500. The funds were in random money rolls and checks that had been in her possession for months but not deposited, Fierro said.
The PTA then conducted a more detailed audit and discovered additional funds could not be accounted for. Police were called and investigators conducted a search of Yeakey’s home on March 21, 2017; they found some additional PTA checks and a money box with cash inside. That brought the amount of missing money down to $2,840.23, the prosecutor said.
“She initially told police that she really didn’t steal any money [and] that she was just overwhelmed in life and abusing alcohol,” Fierro said. “She promised to repay the missing money but failed to do so.”
As a condition of her sentence, the judge ordered Yeakey to make restitution in the amount of $2,840. She was also banned from any contact with Elizabeth Scott PTA.
Because Yeakey exceeded her authority in terms of how she handled the missing funds, she “technically did embezzle that full amount,” Fierro explained. “We were just fortunate enough to be able to recover” all but $2,840
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