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Woman arraigned in theft from auto dealer
By JOHN W. GOODWIN JR.
YOUNGSTOWN
A New Middletown woman accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Boardman auto dealer is in Mahoning County jail awaiting her next court appearance.
Debra L. Chance, 40, of Kerrywood Street, was arraigned this week before Magistrate Dennis Sarisky of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on one count of aggravated theft.
The indictment says Chance is believed to have stolen between $500,000 and $1 million from The Honda Store on Boardman-Canfield Road. The alleged thefts are believed to have taken place between Sept. 1, 2005, and April 30, 2009.
Chance pleaded not guilty to the felony charge and was issued a bond of $50,000. She was unable to post the bond at the hearing and was taken into custody and transported to the jail.
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 say 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 in a fictitious name.
According to police reports, during an internal investigation, Chance acknowledged owing the business more than $23,000 on falsified checks. Police estimate the total loss at about $600,000, however.