Corrections Employees Sentenced to Prison for Theft?

Tammi Stephens, Daynna Gregory, & Richard Cantrell – Corrections employees have been sentenced to federal prison for stealing victims’ restitution money.  The funds were supposedly controlled by the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDOC), where Stephens and Gregory formerly worked in its banking department.

It appears that these Corrections Employees – Tammi Stephens, Daynna Gregory and Richard Cantrell – were all idiots for thinking that this scheme would ever have a chance of working.

What were they thinking?

You work in the prison on the right side of the bars and think that somehow you’re going to get by with stealing from money that’s supposed to go to victims of inmates?  I’m baffled…  So you think it makes sense to steal again from victims who have already been harmed.  Really? Karma…oh well!

“Stephens and Gregory stole from a fund that compensates crime victims, a fund that the two had been entrusted to help administer,” said U.S. Attorney John Horn.  “By printing false checks and delivering them to Cantrell to launder through his business, Stephens and Gregory callously abused that trust, and effectively preyed upon crime victims a second time.”

“This sentencing holds all three defendants fully accountable for their organized criminal scheme to deprive previous crime victims of monies fully due them.  The fact that two of the defendants were State employees abusing their positions of trust made the crimes all the more reprehensible,” said J. Britt Johnson, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Atlanta Field Office.

And here are the details…

According to U.S. Attorney Horn, the charges and other information presented in court: From September 2013 to June 2014, Stephens and Gregory were employees in the Georgia GDOC banking unit where they were responsible for issuing checks drawn on a restitution fund set up to compensate victims of other crimes.  The defendants formed and carried out a plan to steal victim restitution money by having Stephens and Gregory use their access to the fund to issue fraudulent checks payable to a flower shop owned by Cantrell, who was not a GDOC employee.  The checks were purposely issued to Cantrell’s flower shop to hide the defendants’ involvement in the theft. Cantrell agreed to use his business to launder the stolen money.

After printing the fraudulent checks, Stephens and Gregory altered the Department’s financial records to further disguise their theft.  Stephens and Gregory issued 29 fraudulent checks to the flower shop, which were then delivered to Cantrell, who cashed them and split the proceeds with Stephens and Gregory.  In total, the defendants stole more than $232,426.76 in restitution funds, which they then spent on a variety of retail purchases.

• Tammi Stephens, 37, of Forsyth, Georgia, was sentenced to three years in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay restitution of $232,426.76.
• Daynna Gregory, 41, of Lithonia Georgia, was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay restitution of $232,426.76.
• Richard Cantrell, 54, of Marietta, Georgia, was sentenced to two years in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay restitution of $232,426.76.

And now these Corrections Employees  get to experience being on the other side of the bars!

As a business ethics author and speaker, it is clear that nothing happens over night and most crimes start small.  For more information about how crimes like this can be detected and prevented visit gallagher.pcgdev.com and let’s talk.

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