Woman pleads guilty to lawyer group theft
Bettysue Higgins has pleaded guilty to embezzling $166,000 from her former employer, the Maine Trial Lawyers Association, and now faces prison time.
Higgins pleaded guilty yesterday in Kennebec County Superior Court to theft by unauthorized taking or transfer and forgery, according to the Kennebec Journal. Higgins was accused of forging the name of the nonprofit's director on 220 checks she cashed or made payable to herself between 2006 and 2010, using most of the money on online social media games. Higgins was fired last October after an investigation. She previously pleaded not guilty to the charges, and her guilty plea comes just before a jury trial was set to begin. Under an agreement, Higgins' sentence will be capped at six years in prison with all but five suspended and three years of probation. She will also be ordered to pay restitution to the lawyers' group, though that is unlikely, as the home she and her husband own is in foreclosure, the paper reported. In 1991, Higgins was convicted of stealing from the Gardiner area school district and served only probation.
The trial lawyers' association, an Augusta-based nonprofit, has also filed a lawsuit against Bank of America for its role in the embezzlement. The suit argues the bank erred in allowing Higgins to set up online banking for the association even though she was not authorized to do so and cashed forged checks written out to her even though she was not an authorized signatory. The bank has denied wrongdoing.
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments