Former employee in Payne County Sheriff's Office charged with embezzlement

A former Payne County Sheriff’s Office worker has been charged with eight felonies, accused of spending thousands of taxpayer dollars on personal expenses.

In Payne County District Court, Linda Farley, 61, of Stillwater, faces six counts of embezzlement and two counts of making false entry relating to expenditure of public funds.

The amount allegedly embezzled was more than $137,700. A state forensic audit has cost the sheriff’s office more than $70,600.

“This embezzlement was complex and brazen and committed by an employee trusted by the Sheriff’s Office,” Laura Austin Thomas, district attorney for Payne and Logan counties, alleged in a statement. “The employee embezzled county funds while in a position of public trust which can never be tolerated.”

Farley on Wednesday made her initial court appearance. She pleaded not guilty.

As of Thursday afternoon, she remained in the Payne County jail on $100,000 bond. Her next court date is April 1.

Reached by phone, her Oklahoma City-based attorney declined to comment for this story.

Investigation began over alleged work on worker's personal car, records say

In court filings, investigators say the alleged embezzlement started soon after Farley was hired in 2009 to work in the Payne County Sheriff's Office as a full-time employee to handle administrative duties, including purchasing, payroll and management of the sheriff's office credit cards.

In November of 2021, Payne County Sheriff Joe Harper and Payne County Clerk Glenna Craig notified Thomas, the district attorney, that an outside vendor had submitted an original purchase order initiated by Farley on behalf of the sheriff’s office to the county clerk’s office.

The invoice allegedly established that Farley had used the services of the vendor for work on her personal vehicle while she was documenting it as if work had been done on a county vehicle.

Farley was immediately fired.

Thomas contacted the state auditor and inspector's office and requested a full forensic audit of the Payne County Sheriff’s Office going back to Farley’s date of hire.

She also requested that the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation conduct a criminal investigation.

Farley is alleged to have utilized a number of false purchasing records and the sheriff’s office credit card to purchase different goods and services for personal use, including hotel stays, home improvement items such as a farmhouse kitchen sink, vinyl flooring, siding and skirting, a double bathroom vanity, a glass storm door, a laptop computer and gasoline.

She is also alleged to have submitted claims for overtime that was not authorized.

In an arrest affidavit written by an agent with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, from April 2017 through June 2020, 18 purchase orders totaling $54,459.24 were issued in the name of Farley’s son, for work not performed or items not purchased.

In an interview with Farley’s son, the OSBI agent learned that her son “had never done any work for the Payne County Sheriff’s Office.”

Farley is alleged to have used a signature stamp to forge signatures on payroll claims and purchase orders, or else her representations on purchase orders were such that the sheriff or undersheriff signed without knowing that the purchase was for personal use.

Thomas said she brought a former prosecutor out of retirement to help work on the case.

Karen Dixon, who has nearly 40 years of prosecution experience and expertise in embezzlement cases, agreed to a part-time position focused on the Farley case, as well as a handful of other embezzlement cases in both Payne and Logan counties.

“Embezzlement prosecutions can be difficult and very time consuming focused on determining the precise criminal schemes used and how those schemes evaded detection for so long,” Thomas said in a statement. “Due to the importance to the citizens served by public officials and their employees, I take investigating and preventing these crimes of corruption very seriously.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Payne County Sheriff's Office former worker charged with embezzlement