A woman has been accused of stealing around $30,000 from the Magnolia Cemetery Board in Ragley, according to the Beauregard Parish Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies say Patricia Welch had been serving as a bookkeeper for Magnolia Cemetery when, in March of 2021, she informed her employer that she was moving to Reno and needed to return the cemetery financial records to the Board.
According to the Sheriff’s Office, she then informed the cemetery that their Capitol One Bank account had been hacked resulting in about $14,000 being stolen. She told the Board that she’d closed the account in order to salvage the remaining balance.
But, after reviewing the records, the Board says they learned that the account had been closed due to overdraft fees in December 2020 and that their yearly financial spreadsheets had been fabricated by Welch.
Deputies say an investigation into the lost funds showed that Welch had stolen around $30,000 between March of 2018 and December of 2020. Welch allegedly wrote checks to herself and deposited them into her personal bank account, used the cemetery’s debit card for personal use, and transferred a number of funds from the cemetery account into her personal account.
Welch was arrested on February 15, 2022, in Reno, NV, for felony theft and transferred to the Beauregard Parish Sheriff’s Office on March 2.
Her bond has been set at $75,000.
https://www.kplctv.com/2022/03/09/woman-accused-stealing-30000-magnolia-cemetery/