By SHAYLA ESCUDERO/Lincoln Chronicle
NEWPORT – A former city of Toledo utility clerk pleaded guilty Friday in Lincoln County circuit court to embezzling over $4,000 from utility customers to pay her own bills and taking over $9,400 from the city’s union.
Janet L. Elmore, 47, pleaded guilty to two counts of theft during sentencing following a plea agreement.
While working for the city of Toledo, Elmore redirected over $4,000 of payments from customers to her own account and the accounts of family members. She also made $9,400 worth of unauthorized purchases using a bank debit card belonging to the city of Toledo Employees Association. She was the union’s treasurer.
As part of the plea agreement, Elmore was ordered to complete paying restitution of $2,400 to the union and perform 200 hours of community service.
In the aftermath, the actions dealt a blow to public trust and for at least one staff member, shattered a friendship.
Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Elmore at her Toledo home in February 2024, charging her with two counts of theft.
Elmore was taking in customer payments toward their utility bills and in 22 separate events took the money and applied it to her and family members’ accounts to pay their utility bills, according to court documents. She also inappropriately removed late fees from her and family member’s accounts, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Elmore also completed 47 unauthorized transactions between April 2022 and December 2023 that totaled more than $9,400 on a union debit card she had access to as its treasurer.
“This is just a gross abuse of public trust …,” Toledo city attorney Michael Adams told Circuit Judge Sheryl Bachart.
Part of Elmore’s plea agreement also involved an apology. Bachart directed Elmore to face the audience, which consisted of a few city employees and a representative of the employee union.
“I want to formally say I’m sorry … I made a huge mistake,” Elmore said.
Deputy district attorney Michael Thornicroft said the case was originally scheduled for a three-day trial, which would have required a lot of resources and time.
“I think what they really, really wanted and they got here today was Ms. Elmore, not wholeheartedly, but admitting what she did was wrong,” Thornicroft said.
Friendship lost
After Friday’s sentencing, Toledo account supervisor Cindy Oleman recounted to the Lincoln Chronicle how at the end of each day she and Elmore would go through the cash drawer and checks to keep track of payments.
She didn’t think Elmore was acting strange during a routine count, but later one day she received a message from Elmore apologizing for her behavior. Elmore had told her that one of the checks from Community Services Consortium, an organization that helps people pay their utility bills, was addressed to her, that she was embarrassed and didn’t want Oleman to see it.
At first, Oleman thought only to reassure her friend that everyone goes through hard times and that she had no judgement about her financial circumstances.
But she thought of the requirements of being able to receive assistance and that most people need to be in danger of having their water shut off. Oleman had never seen Elmore’s name on that list, which she would have had to oversee as the supervisor.
“I thought, something isn’t adding up here,” she said.
So Oleman went through Elmore’s account to see her payment history and saw a check payment.
Elmore usually did everything electronically, so that felt suspicious. Using the check number, Oleman tracked down the paper check and found that the check was from another utility billing customer and that Elmore had found a way to manipulate the software to disguise the payments and apply them to her own account.
The more she looked, the more she found.
“She deliberately chose people who wouldn’t notice, who already had large credits or who were elderly,” she said.
Working for the local government, public trust is already delicate, Oleman said, and when fraud or theft occurs it makes it much more difficult to win that trust back.
Elmore also removed herself from receiving late fees, so the city had to go back and recalculate all her bills to determine what was owed.
When Oleman notified the interim city manager at the time, Amanda Carey, the fraud was immediately apparent, Carey said Friday. There were 16 people whose payments were intercepted, some repeatedly over the course of two years, Carey said.
Carey said she was also disgusted that Elmore took money from union members. As its treasurer, Elmore told union members they were broke and couldn’t even afford to buy pizza for their meetings, she said.
Oleman said Elmore was her friend for over 12 years, even before they worked together. Their families would go camping together and their children are friends.
“My heart just sank,” she said.
Now there’s a different feeling. While there is resolution to the case, Oleman said that doesn’t change the friendship she lost.
- Shayla Escudero covers Lincoln County government, education, Newport, housing and social services for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at Shayla@LincolnChronicle.org
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