Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 29, 1995 TAG: 9508290029
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Alison W. Mutispaugh said she stole money from Automated Data Systems over six years to appease angry drug dealers who threatened to harm her children if she did not pay off her husband's cocaine debts.
"I find that hard to believe," Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Joel Branscom said. "That's an awful lot of drug use for one person."
But Mutispaugh - who received another six years Monday for writing bad checks in Roanoke County and Salem after she was fired from ADS for embezzling - maintained the amount was much less.
"I'm not going to make excuses, because I know I was wrong," Mutispaugh, 32, told Circuit Judge Diane Strickland, "but I know in my heart that there were extenuating circumstances."
Authorities said Mutispaugh began embezzling from the company shortly after she was hired in 1987 - writing checks to herself, forging the name of a supervisor, cashing them, then destroying the canceled checks that came with the monthly bank statement.
Plopping a bundle of 447 forged checks on the witness stand, Branscom said Mutispaugh sometimes wrote herself two or three checks a day as she was making $30,000 a year as accounting manager of ADS.
The company was "paying Ms. Mutispaugh $30,000 a year to steal them blind," Branscom said.
The scheme was discovered last September, on a day when Mutispaugh called in sick. The bank statement happened to arrive that day, and ADS officials discovered several forged checks. The company's owners declined to comment Monday.
Assistant Public Defender Roger Dalton asked for a punishment that would give his client "a good hard slap for what she's done." But he cautioned Strickland, "Don't be overwhelmed with the numbers that are being thrown around."
Mutispaugh, a college graduate and president of her senior class in high school, hopes to pay back the money she has taken. "That's been her plan all along," co-counsel Tom Wray said.
But in ordering restitution, Strickland set the amount at just half of what prosecutors say Mutispaugh stole. "I'd love to see restitution ordered, and I would love to see it paid," Branscom said. "But it will never happen."
Branscom took issue with Mutispaugh's account of her drug-addicted husband, saying he knew of no evidence to support that story. When Mutispaugh was free on bond awaiting trial, the prosecutor said, she was found in the company of a suspected drug dealer from Philadelphia.
Mutispaugh and the man were riding in a brand new Mercedes-Benz that apparently had been paid for in cash, he said. "Maybe the money is still sitting somewhere, waiting for her to get out," Branscom said, "and the last laugh is on us."
by CNB