(Stillwater, Okla.) — A Stillwater woman has admitted embezzling $56,000 from the Central Bank of Oklahoma at 623 S. Main Street in Stillwater while she was employed as the head bank teller between Jan. 1, 2015, and Nov. 17, 2016.
Michelle Ranee Hawkins, 38, who had been free on $10,000 bond for almost two years, was taken into custody last week to begin serving a six-month jail term followed by nine and one-half years of probation on the order of Payne County District Judge Phillip Corley, who approved her plea agreement with prosecutor Jeremiah Gregory.
Hawkins was ordered to pay $58,769 restitution, $100 to the victims’ compensation fund, and the cost of her incarceration. Hawkins also must have a substance abuse evaluation, follow its recommendations, undergo random drug tests, maintain employment and perform 50 hours of community service.
On Nov. 17, 2016, Stillwater Police Officer Ronal Benningfield met with two of the bank’s employees, who “conducted an audit and discovered $56,000 was missing from the vault and the drawer assigned to the head bank teller Michelle Ranee Hawkins,” an affidavit said.
Hawkins, who was the vault teller and teller supervisor, said that she began working at the bank in May of 2014 and started taking “small amounts of cash from her teller drawer or the vault beginning in January of 2015,” Stillwater Police Detective Richard Leport wrote in an affidavit.
“Initially, Michelle Hawkins paid back the cash she took,” she told the detective when he interviewed her on Nov. 21, 2016, the affidavit said.
“In 2016, Michelle Hawkins continued to take amounts of cash from her teller drawer or the vault. Michelle Hawkins then started taking larger amounts of cash two or three times a month,” the affidavit said.
“Michelle Hawkins took up to $1,000, which she concealed in her pocket,” the affidavit said.
On several occasions in 2016, Hawkins “falsified the required monthly vault audit report forms,” by cutting out the signatures of employees and photocopying them onto her falsified vault audit form, the affidavit said.
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