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Woman enters plea agreement

Hefner

ELKINS — A Randolph County woman entered a plea agreement to lower her felony charge to a misdemeanor and to pay restitution after she was arrested and charged with embezzling funds from a local supermarket.

Tammy Michelle Hefner, 38, appeared in Randolph County Magistrate Court on July 25, with attorney Paul Gwaltney, and accepted an agreement to plead guilty to one count of petit larceny, a misdemeanor. Hefner was initially charged with one count of felony embezzlement and 22 counts of fraud with an access device.

As part of the agreement, the year in jail Hefner would have been sentenced to for the petit larceny charge was suspended for one year of unsupervised probation, beginning on July 25. Hefner is also required, per the agreement, to forfeit her bond, a $2,862 cash-only bond, for restitution to the Kroger supermarket on 11th Street in Elkins.

When asked by Randolph County Magistrate Mike Dyer if anyone had spoken with officials at the supermarket about the plea, Assistant Randolph County Prosecutor Christina Harper said she had been informed that “they were fine with it, as long as they got restitution.”

According to the criminal complaint, prepared by Cpl. D.R. Wolford Jr. of the Elkins Detachment of the West Virginia State Police, on June 27, Wolford was contacted by Lt. C.G. Boatwright of the Elkins Police Department regarding a complaint at the Kroger supermarket on 11th Street.

The store’s asset protection specialist told police that Hefner, a store employee, had, between the dates of May 9 and June 27, conducted 22 cashier transactions “placing cash onto two accounts associated with Green Dot Bank totaling $2,862, the complaint states.

Hefner allegedly “completed these transactions when no customer was present at the register and would utilize her phone to scan at the point-of-sale scanner,” according to the complaint.

Hefner allegedly added cash to a Green Dot bank card using the PayNearMe application, according to the complaint.

Wolford writes that the money embezzled was added to two separate Green Dot card numbers, the complaint states.

The store reportedly supplied officers with both “receipts for all 22 transactions and video surveillance of the same,” according to the complaint.

Starting at $3.92/week.

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