PORT ANGELES — The trial of former Clallam County Treasurer’s Office cashier Catherine Betts has been moved back to Jan. 10, 2011 — almost two years after her alleged confession in May 2009 led to a charge of stealing $617,467 in public funds that have yet to be recovered.
Clallam County Superior Court Judge George L. Wood granted the delay last week so Betts’ lawyers could hire forensic accounting experts, a move that will eventually prompt a request for emergency funding from Port Angeles lawyer Loren Oakley of Clallam Public Defenders, Oakley said Monday.
Oakley and Port Angeles lawyer Harry Gasnick, also representing Betts, argued for the delay so the experts could sift through 60,000 pages of Treasurer’s Office ledgers, spreadsheets and other documents spanning six years from February 2004 to May 2009, the time during which Betts allegedly stole real estate excise taxes paid by the public.
“I expect this office will have to put in plenty of time on this one,” Oakley said.
On May 19, 2009, Betts admitted stealing from $1,200 to $1,300 in public funds and was soon fired.
The amount missing grew to $617,467 after a seven-month state Auditor’s Office investigation in which up to three auditors, headed by Jim Brittain from the agency’s investigative division, sifted through the same approximately 60,000 documents that Oakley’s team has yet to plumb.
“We are not the forensic experts, they are,” Oakley said. “That’s why we need to hire experts to help us through this thing.”
Betts, 46, is charged with first-degree theft for allegedly exchanging checks with cash from the office cash drawer between Feb. 1, 2004, through May 19, 2009, when staff in Treasurer Judy Scott’s office discovered a discrepancy in the daily balancing that reportedly led Betts to admit to police that she stole the smaller amount.
In its Feb. 23 report, the state Auditor’s Office said Betts hid the transactions by altering and destroying documents and manipulating computer spreadsheets.
“The county did not monitor this activity, enabling her to manipulate transactions and misappropriate funds,” the report said.
The state Auditor’s Office recommended that Clallam County seek recovery of $617,467 in misappropriated public funds, related Auditor’s Office investigative costs of $28,719 and $6,000 that the county was charged for bank records.
The county has filed a claim under the county’s crime policy for the combined total of $652,186 with Great American Insurance Co. of Walnut Creek, Calif., which is “pretty close” to giving the county an update on the claim, county Human Resources Director Marge Upham said.
The insurance company said it would update the county the first week in April, but hasn’t yet.
“The last time I spoke with the person in charge of the [insurance company’s] criminal division, he said they were in the process of hiring their own forensic accountant to verify the state auditor’s report,” Upham said.
“By the time this is done, who knows how many forensic accountants are going to look at this?”
State Attorney General’s Office spokesman Dan Sytman said Monday that Scott Marlow, the assistant attorney general prosecuting the case, does not have a theory on what happened to the money Betts allegedly stole.
“Some of what she did with the money will likely come out in the trial, but it is not key to proving her guilt,” Sytman said.
Clallam County Sheriff Bill Benedict said Monday that at first he speculated that Betts gambled away the money, but was wrong.
Marlow will not hire a forensic accountant for the trial and will instead rely on Brittain’s report, Sytman added.
Betts was hired by then-Treasurer Ruth Gerdon in January 2001, and Gerdon made her the office cashier in January 2003.
Gerdon resigned her treasurer position before her term was up and Scott, Gerdon’s chief deputy for 14 years, was appointed by county commissioners in January 2005 to finish Gerdon’s term.
Scott ran unopposed in fall 2005 for Gerdon’s unexpired term and ran again without opposition in 2006 to a full term.
She filed last week to run for re-election in the Nov. 2 general election against one opponent.
Scott is at a state treasurers’ conference this week and was unavailable for comment Monday.
Selinda Barkhuis, a senior planner with the county’s Department of Community Development and a nonpracticing attorney, is running against Scott in response to the theft.
The delay — meaning Betts will be tried after the election — is “not atypical, having been a defense attorney, and cases of that sort of magnitude take time,” Barkhuis said Monday.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
