VFW manager accused of stealing $300,000 in pull tab cash and more in Prosser

The Prosser VFW hall manager is accused of pocketing more than $300,000, according to the Washington State Gambling Commission.

While the investigator didn’t say why Sara Lee Moon, 39, took the money, court documents claim she planned to take a trip to Las Vegas.

The gambling commission investigation blamed Moon for thousands of dollars of missing money that was supposed to go to the veterans’ organization between 2019 and 2022. She was the manager of the post’s canteen.

She allegedly skimmed money from the pull tabs, bar sales and an ongoing raffle, sometimes putting it directly into accounts that belonged to her.

Prosecutors have charged her with four counts of first-degree theft in Benton County Superior Court. Each felony carries an additional aggravating factor of being a major economic offense, which could add additional time to a possible sentence.

She is currently being held in the Benton County jail in lieu of $50,000 bail.

Moon took over managing the post in June 2019, and along with making schedules, placing orders and filling in as a bartender, she was responsible for all bookkeeping, deposits and gambling supplies.

She also oversaw the canteen’s pull tab machines, which is where the Washington State Gambling Commission’s investigation started.

It’s unclear in the court documents if the review was routine or if the commission was alerted to a problem.

What Moon told investigators was that there was a “gambling till” that started off with $800 each day. At the end of the the shift, the bartender would reconcile the cash in that register with a report showing how many tickets were sold.

The gambling proceeds were supposed to go into a separate bank account, and the post vice commander and quartermaster would go through all of the bills that were supposed to be paid by the post and sign off on them.

None of the bills were supposed to be paid out of the gambling revenue.

Missing VFW money

The commission investigator soon learned that the money was not going where it should be.

For example, the post received $144,000 in pull tab sales in 2021, but less than half of that made it into the VFW’s gambling account.

Bank records for the account showed at least two transfers of money from the VFW account was put directly into Moon’s own prepaid debit card account, according to court documents.

When the agent pressed Moon about the missing money, she said she had paid some bills using the gambling money. But when she turned over the receipts, they only accounted for a third of the missing money, leaving another $49,000 unaccounted for.

The also found another $76,963 missing from pull tab revenue between 2019 and 2020.

In addition, Moon created a personal Square account and started running all of the post’s credit card sales through it in 2019. Square is a company that provides credit card reading systems to businesses.

Between 2019 and 2020, all of the revenue from the credit card sales made it back to the post, but in 2021 she began keeping a portion of the money, claim investigators. In total, she is accused of taking nearly $38,000.

She also allegedly skimmed $118,000 from the cash sales between 2019 and 2022, according to the charging documents.

Finally, the post ran an ongoing raffle where people could buy tickets in hopes of winning a growing jackpot. A total of $23,000 never made it into VFW accounts, say investigators.

Over the course of several interviews, Moon gave inconsistent statements about the post’s finances but denied taking the money, according to court documents.