A manager at a Shopko store in the Village of Suamico is accused of stealing more than $7,000 from the store.
According to a criminal complaint filed last Friday, Jocelyn A. Saunders admitted to stealing $7,022 from store deposits. According to the complaint, Saunders said she had gotten into some trouble with pay day loans and the interest was very high. The complaint also states that Saunders was trying to pay for rent, car payments and provide for her daughter.
The complaint says that in October 2018, she took $200 from the cash office for a car payment. The complaint says she covered the loss by taking money from the next weeks deposit money. The complaint says Saunders told investigators that it snowballed from there, and she began taking more and more money. She would cover the losses by having the deposits be a week behind, according to the complaint.
After Christmas, the complaint says the cash deposits became too small to create the fake deposits to cover the previous week’s losses. According to the complaint, Saunders was unable to make deposits look legit anymore, so she stopped sending them to the bank. This is how the company realized the money was missing.
The complaint says Saunders admitted to investigators that she took $5,622 over the last several months from the store deposits, and another $1,400 from the store safe. The complaint says she altered the safe fund log books so that the rest of the store's team was unaware of the losses.
Saunders faces one charge of Theft by Employee. She faces a $10,000 fine and a possible prison sentence of up to six years.
Shopko is closing all of its stores after filing for bankruptcy earlier this year.
