HOBART – A preliminary hearing conference for two former officials in Lone Wolf’s Town Hall has been continued to Aug. 17 in Kiowa County District Court before Judge Rick Marsh.
Margrett Mae Horton, 57, of Lone Wolf, the former office manager, is named in two felony embezzlement charges, and co-defendant Bonnie Charlene Keesee, 51, of Sentinel, the town’s former clerk/treasurer, is named in one felony count of embezzlement.
Both have pleaded not guilty and are free on bond.
District Attorney David Thomas and Assistant D.A. Daniel Jacobsma, filed embezzlement charges against the two women on Feb. 23 in the wake of two audits.
Horton is accused of embezzling $17,524 from municipal coffers by placing her two dependent children on the town’s health insurance program between July 1, 2015, and Dec. 3, 2017.
The town’s code of ordinances did not provide for paid health insurance for family members of employees. Additionally, minutes of Board of Trustees and Public Works Authority meetings over a 10-year period, from January 2008 through December 2017, did not reflect approval of dependent health insurance coverage.
Horton “admitted that she purchased the insurance for her children” without obtaining approval from the town trustees, State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd wrote last year in her report on the audit of Lone Wolf’s municipal government.
Keesee and Horton are named jointly in a charge accusing them of embezzling $2,300 from the sale of fireworks purchased for the town’s annual Independence Day celebration: $1,500 in 2015 and $800 in 2016.