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Teen gets jail in Mahoning treasurer office theft
YOUNGSTOWN
A former summer worker in the Mahoning County Treasurer’s Office has been sentenced to a year in the county jail followed by three years’ probation in a series of thefts and forgeries from that office.
Kyheem Underwood, 19, of Jean Street, Campbell, drew the sentence Wednesday from Judge Shirley J. Christian of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
Judge Christian also ordered Underwood to complete drug rehabilitation after he leaves jail and to make $1,231 in restitution to the county within the three years.
The treasurer’s office credited the taxpayers whose real-estate tax payment checks Underwood stole, forged and cashed.
Underwood’s job included opening and sorting the treasurer’s office mail.
“I’m fully responsible and very apologetic,” Underwood told the judge. “I would like to give every dime back.”
Underwood said drugs took over his thought processes and that he should never have gone to work under their influence.
It was Underwood’s third sentencing in the same series of crimes he committed in the same workplace.
Underwood was sentenced after entering his third guilty plea in September, after his third indictment, before the third different common pleas judge in the crimes he committed as a summer worker in the treasurer’s office in 2015.
In his September 2016 plea hearing before Judge Christian, Underwood pleaded guilty to one count of theft in office, three counts each of theft and receiving stolen property and six counts of forgery on the day his jury trial was set to begin.
In making the plea agreement, Nicholas Brevetta, an assistant county prosecutor, recommended incarceration concurrent with the six-month jail term imposed Sept. 1 by Judge John M. Durkin after Underwood pleaded guilty to theft in office and forgery.
Judge Durkin’s sentence, which included three years’ probation, was imposed after Underwood was arrested in Campbell on a bench warrant for his earlier failure to appear before Judge Durkin for his scheduled sentencing.
In November 2015, visiting Judge Richard D. Reinbold Jr. sentenced Underwood to six months’ probation after he pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property.
Underwood, who had no prior criminal record, was indicted three times because he did not admit all of his crimes when he was initially charged, Brevetta said.
“Had you, at the very beginning, just simply admitted to what you’d done, you wouldn’t be in this position, where you’ve got three different cases in three different courts, all based upon the same behavior; and that sort of makes me wonder whether you’re sincere in terms of the need to get rehabilitation,” Judge Christian told Underwood.
Brevetta did not blame any weaknesses in treasurer’s office procedures regarding mail handling or timely deposit of real-estate tax-payment checks for the thefts and forgeries.
He added there was nothing county Treasurer Dan Yemma could have done to prevent Underwood from pilfering the checks from the mail.
After Underwood was indicted the third time, Yemma, a Democrat, said his office opens and sorts its mail daily, processes it as quickly as possible and continues to work to improve its efficiency in this task.
The checks and balances in the treasurer’s office ensure that anyone who steals will be caught, he added.