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Woman accepts plea deal in thefts
YOUNGSTOWN
The New Middletown woman accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Boardman auto dealership has reached a plea agreement with prosecutors that could land her in prison for up to five years.
Debra L. Chance, 40, of Kerrywood Street, appeared Monday before Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court for a pretrial hearing. Chance previously had been indicted on one count of aggravated theft, a second-degree felony.
Chance, in a plea agreement with prosecutors, agreed to plead guilty to aggravated theft in the third degree. The third-degree felony can carry a five-year prison sentence. A second-degree felony carries a maximum eight-year sentence.
Prosecutors will recommend Chance be sentenced to four years in prison on the felony-theft conviction. She will be sentenced Feb. 8.
As part of the plea agreement, Chance also must make restitution to the business. A set amount of restitution has not been determined, but Chance did make a payment of $10,000 while in court Monday.
Chance is believed to have stolen between $500,000 and $1 million from The Honda Store on Boardman-Canfield Road. The thefts are believed to have taken place between Sept. 1, 2005, and April 30, 2009.
According to Boardman police reports, Chance had been an office manager at the car dealership from 2005 through March 2009, and police believe she had been stealing funds from the company for most of that time.
Police say Chance would write loan checks to herself, write a phony receipt, then credit her own account instead of putting the money into the dealership’s account.
Police said Chance also would take cash from the business transactions for a given day, writing a check for the amount of the cash but pulling the check out of the daily deposit before the deposit was made to the bank.
Police confiscated three business checks Chance is believed to have made out to herself and signed a fictitious name.
According to police reports, during an internal investigation, Chance acknowledged owing the business more than $23,000 on falsified checks.