PORT ANGELES — Catherine Betts was handcuffed and taken into custody as she sat in her wheelchair Wednesday after a Clallam County Superior Court jury found her guilty of stealing at least $617,467 in public money that never has been recovered.
After a 1½-week trial, the eight-woman, four-man jury took four hours to find the former Clallam County Treasurer’s Office cashier guilty of all the charges against her: aggravated first-degree theft, money laundering and 19 counts of filing false or fraudulent tax returns on behalf of the county with the state Department of Revenue.
“There was no doubt in my mind whatsoever” about the verdict, juror Kenneth Abrahams of Port Angeles, a retired logger and formerly of Forks, said in a telephone interview.
What Betts did “was a betrayal of trust,” he said.
The jury found the 47-year-old former Port Angeles resident guilty of stealing between $617,467 and $793,595 in public money from the Treasurer’s Office cash drawer between 2003 and 2009, when the theft was first discovered.
Betts, who now lives in Shelton, has been on her own recognizance since her arrest in June 2009.
After the verdict was read Wednesday afternoon by Judge Brooke Taylor, he set her bail at $100,000, and she was immediately jailed.
Taylor set a sentencing hearing for 9 a.m. Aug. 24.
Betts faces 43 months to 21 years in prison, said state Assistant Attorney General Scott Marlow, the fraud and white-collar-crime specialist who prosecuted the case.
Loren Oakley, one of two lawyers from Clallam-Jefferson Public Defenders representing Betts, said he disagreed with Marlow’s calculation of a minimum sentence.
He also said he intends to file an appeal.
A seven-month state Auditor’s Office investigation by chief investigator Jim Brittain, who testified at the trial, determined that real estate excise tax checks from the public were exchanged with cash from the office cash drawer and that documents were altered and destroyed, and phantom spreadsheets created, to hide the scam.
Brittain’s report said that at least $617,467 in public funds was taken, adding that “the actual amount of the loss cannot be determined.”
Marlow said there were “1,000 instances of improper taking.”
He said Tuesday in his closing argument that the bank deposits approached $10,000 at a time.
Betts was the only witness for the defense, but what she said — and didn’t say — was damning, Abrahams said.
Betts had admitted she took one $877 check but could not explain large cash deposits that were made to her bank account.
“I wasn’t aware,” Betts had testified.
That did not sit well with Abrahams, he said Wednesday.
“You don’t ignore $10,000 in cash; I don’t care who you are,” Abrahams said.
“That money had to be coming from somewhere, and she couldn’t come up with a reason for it being there.”
In his closing argument, Harry Gasnick, who with Oakley represented Betts, said she never spent the $877 she stole and did not exhibit the lifestyle of someone who had embezzled more than $600,000 over six years.
Gasnick said lax controls at the Treasurer’s Office made it impossible to determine who the culprit was.
“What you are being asked to do is to find that this lady here should be taking a fall for all of the misconduct and possible misappropriations and absolute mismanagement of that office for that period of time, and you can’t do that,” Gasnick told the jury Wednesday.
Marlow responded in his rebuttal Wednesday that it didn’t matter how the money was spent and that Betts was the only person in the office who balanced real estate excise tax transactions.
She would have noticed had anyone else been committing the scam, Marlow said.
That point, too, convinced the jury, Abrahams said.
“If someone else had been dipping, she would have been blowing the whistle, and she wasn’t,” he said.
Port Angeles Police Department Detective Jason Viada investigated the case with Brittain and a state Attorney General’s Office investigator.
Viada, who attended the entire trial, sat in a chair on the first floor of the courthouse about a half-hour after the verdict.
“I guess I’m making a shift right now from she was alleged to have stolen that money from the people of this county to she stole that money from the taxpayers of this county, period,” Viada said.
It may never be known exactly how much was stolen.
The county received a $597,516 insurance settlement, minus a $10,000 deductible, after forensic accountants for Great American Insurance Co. said they could confirm $607,516 was stolen.
Clallam County put the total at $611,485.
The $617,467 figure makes the theft the fifth-largest embezzlement of public money in Washington since 2000, the state Auditor’s Office said last week.
After the scam was discovered, internal controls at the Treasurer’s Office were tightened by then-Treasurer Judy Scott, who testified in the trial, and current Treasurer Selinda Barkhuis, who defeated Scott for re-election in November.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
