Ex-Connell councilwoman repays embezzled $315,000

A former Connell bookkeeper has paid back more than $315,000 to cover the money she embezzled from a local cemetery district and a Mesa farmer.

Monica Lou Pruett, 64, has completed her restitution requirements within four years of her separate convictions.

That included full payment of court-related fees and costs.

Franklin County Prosecutor Shawn Sant said it is “kind of a rare occasion” when restitution is paid in full so quick on theft cases of this magnitude.

He said he waited for everything to be finalized with the victims and the Franklin County Clerk’s Office before announcing it was a done deal.

Pruett liquidated property she had owned in Franklin County to help make the large payments, Sant said.

Pruett was Connell City Council’s mayor pro tem when she was arrested in August 2012 for taking $160,000 from Bill Swensen through her bookkeeping and accounting services for his D & S Farms. She resigned from the council one month later.

Swensen, who inherited the farm from his father, discovered the embezzlement after finding extra checks in varying amounts paid to Pruett’s business each month that had not been included in the monthly report.

Pruett stole the money to cover personal bills, property taxes and business expenses. She pleaded guilty to first-degree theft, while a charge of money laundering was dismissed.

She was serving a two-year prison term when two new allegations popped up for skimming money from another Mesa farmer and the Franklin County Cemetery District No. 2.

Pruett had been business manager of the cemetery district, which covers Mountain View Cemetery in Connell.

An investigation by the state Auditor’s Office found she had failed to deposit $14,000 from plot sales and $5,000 from fees for digging and closing up gravesites.

Another $2,100 went toward payments to her private business, Lierman Business Services, which left $32,300 in “questionable” compensation, according to the audit.

Pruett claimed that some of the minutes for the district meetings were lost, erased or destroyed. Though those records didn’t relate to her secretarial position, it was her duty to preserve them.

She pleaded guilty in another deal to one felony charge of “injury to and misappropriation of record,” reduced from two counts of first-degree theft. A judge allowed that 12-month sentence to be run together with her current prison time.

Pruett was barred from working in accounting for 10 years after her February 2015 conviction involving the cemetery district.

Sant credited the cemetery district’s current business manager, Pam Moon, with gathering records and evidence so they could recover $70,200 of the public’s money.

“People want to see, when it’s tax money taken, they want to see that diligence,” Sant said.

Swensen received $245,000 in restitution.

Both amounts included interest, according to Sant.

This story was originally published August 28, 2017 at 6:46 PM with the headline "Ex-Connell councilwoman repays embezzled $315,000."