The final chapter on the 2020 Stansbury Service Agency theft case should be closed as the former employee who pleaded guilty to a 2nd degree felony charge of theft on Nov. 15, 2022, along with three other charges, was scheduled to appear before Judge Teresa Welch in Tooele for sentencing on Tuesday morning.
The Stansbury Park Service Agency received $975,260.32 from their insurance company which was equivalent to the total known losses from the theft case which involved the arrest of the agency’s officer manager, Tracey Schmidtke, on Nov. 15, 2020.
The service agency was also given an additional $69,500 from their insurance company to cover charges that were suspected but not fully confirmed as fraudulent.
Schmidtke, 62, was charged with theft, communications fraud, and two counts of unlawful use of a financial transaction card, all second-degree felonies. She entered a guilty plea to those charges on Nov. 15, 2022, according to court records.
Since the incident, the service agency has revamped their software, financial processes and safeguards, according to Cassandra Arnell, chair of the Stansbury Service Agency Board of Trustees.
“I see this as a very positive and direct outcome of the fraud investigation,” Arnell said. “That process gave the board the gumption to find a highly qualified person to energetically lead the needed changes and upgrade the professionalism within the agency.”
It was found that Schmidtke had been making the financial charges through an unauthorized PayPal account she created in her employer’s name, according to the probable cause statement written at the time of her arrest.
As part of her job, Schmidtke oversaw all money transactions and paid bills for the agency.
Schmidtke admitted to linking her employer’s checking account to the unauthorized PayPal account she had created and making numerous fraudulent charges and transactions, while creating fraudulent invoices from businesses to cover what she had been charging, according to the probable cause statement.
She also used the PayPal account to transfer $33,700 to her personal checking account from August 2020 to November 2020.
It was found that she had been transferring money to herself since 2019.
Schmidtke admitted to using the PayPal account to pay for various merchandise and food from Amazon, eHarmony, Domino’s, Stitch Fix, Twitch, Urban Outfitters, and many others totaling over $40,000 over a three month period, according to the pc statement.
She also admitted to making numerous personal vehicle payments, and transferring money to her son for his utility bills.
