— By

Sun Journal

AUBURN — A Westbrook woman who embezzled nearly $162,000 from a local bank and spent $18,000 of it on a gambling trip has asked a judge to change her conditions of probation so she can get a job.

A judge in Androscoggin County Superior Court said Thursday he would allow Diana Moynihan-Stevens, 34, to handle money at a new job as long as she is supervised in that role and the job is OK’d by her probation officer. She also would have to notify her new boss that she is on probation.

”You’ve got to find something and start making restitution,” Justice Thomas Delahanty II told Moynihan-Stevens.

She owes $96,435 of the roughly $162,000 she stole from TD Banknorth in Auburn when she worked there in 2005. Bank officials notified police of an internal theft that led to an investigation. She had embezzled the money from bank customers over a six-month period. It was reimbursed to customers by the bank, according to court records.

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After she was confronted by bank officials, Moynihan-Stevens admitted stealing the money. She repaid about $65,000.

Court records showed she spent $8,000 of the embezzled money on a trip to Jamaica; $9,000 on a car; $8,000 on furniture; $3,000 on a computer; and $3,000 on Christmas gifts.

She pleaded guilty to theft by unauthorized taking and was sentenced to serve 18 months of a five-year prison sentence. She started serving a three-year probation sentence last year. She lost an appeal of her sentence.

She told the judge Thursday she has been looking for work while attending school full time.

”I think it would better my chances” of finding a job if allowed to work with financial transactions, she said. ”I’ve been looking for whatever I can get.”

Craig Turner, deputy district attorney, said Moynihan-Stevens had ”done OK” on probation, so far.


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