HOBART — The former office manager at Lone Wolf’s Town Hall pleaded guilty last week to three embezzlement charges.
Margrett Mae Horton, 58, of Lone Wolf admitted committing embezzlement by a public officer, a felony; misdemeanor embezzlement by an officer; and felony embezzlement.
Horton was sentenced to 10 years in prison on one embezzlement charge and eight years on the other, plus one year in the Kiowa County Jail on the misdemeanor count. Kiowa County Associate District Judge Rick Marsh suspended all three sentences, provided Horton commits no additional crimes.
However, Marsh ordered Horton to pay nearly $35,500, which includes:
• $18,664.24 in restitution.
• $14,416 to reimburse Lone Wolf for fees the town incurred in having its ledgers examined by the State Auditor and Inspector’s Office.
• $2,403.50 in fines, court costs and assessments.
Horton also will be under the supervision of the state Corrections Department for the next two years.
Lone Wolf’s former town clerk/treasurer, Bonnie Charlene Keesee, 51, of Sentinel pleaded guilty Nov. 16, 2022, to two misdemeanor counts, one of which was reduced from felony embezzlement of town property.
The penalty imposed by Marsh was two consecutive, deferred one-year county jail sentences; $1,000 in 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 the Southwest Ledger in explaining 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.
District Attorney David Thomas and Assistant D.A. Daniel Jacobsma filed charges against both women one year ago in the wake of two audits.
Horton was 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 initially 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 fiscal year 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.
In addition to the $35,500 assessed against Horton last week, Cavalry SPV I won a $5,030 default judgment against Horton in 2020 in Kiowa County District Court.
Cavalry SPV I is a debt collection company that buys past-due debts in bulk from credit card and loan companies at a discounted rate, then files suit against the debtors in an effort to collect on the full amount owed.