HOBART – One of two women accused of embezzlement from the Town of Lone Wolf pleaded guilty to a reduced charge, and the other woman is scheduled to appear in court later this month.
Margrett Mae Horton, 57, of Lone Wolf, the former office manager at Lone Wolf’s Town Hall, and Bonnie Charlene Keesee, formerly the town’s clerk/treasurer, were charged in Kiowa County District Court on Feb. 23.
Keesee, 51, of Sentinel, pleaded guilty on Nov. 16 to two misdemeanor counts, one of which was reduced from felony embezzlement of town property.
The penalty imposed by Associate District Judge Rick Marsh was two consecutive, deferred one-year county jail sentences, two $500 fines, payment of $11,000 in restitution, and a $40 monthly supervision fee to be paid during Keesee’s one-year probationary period.
Keesee “paid restitution up-front, had no prior record, and I believe in giving people a second chance,” Assistant District Attorney Thomas Talley told Southwest Ledger in explaining the reduction of the felony charge to a misdemeanor.
In addition, a portion of the $11,000 in restitution Keesee paid “will go toward reimbursement” of expenses the State Auditor and Inspector’s Office incurred in conducting a forensic audit of the town’s ledgers, Talley said.
Horton is named in two felony counts of embezzlement of town property. She is scheduled to return to Kiowa County District Court at 1:30 p.m. on Nov. 30.
District Attorney David Thomas and Assistant D.A. Daniel Jacobsma filed 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 were named jointly in a felony count 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.
The criminal charges resulted from a probe conducted by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation that was triggered by an investigative audit performed by the State Auditor’s staff in response to a request from the Board of Trustees of Lone Wolf, a town of approximately 400 residents.
The catalyst for the trustees’ request was an audit performed by Furrh & Associates of Lawton, which examined the town’s records for the fiscal years 2015, 2016 and 2017 and identified “questionable financial activity,” Byrd wrote.
The state audit indicated “there was a lot more” town money that was unaccounted for, “but we couldn’t find anything else that we could charge criminally,” Thomas said.
For example, a renewal-rate record from Blue Cross Blue Shield showed “the Town paid for the Horton children’s insurance since at least 2010,” but municipal records dating back to 2010 were not available, the state auditor reported. “It is estimated that the Town would have paid an additional $47,526 on such unauthorized coverage between 2011 and 2015,” Byrd wrote.
“There just wasn’t adequate oversight in that community,” Talley said.