SKOWHEGAN — Julie Smith, a former clerk in the Somerset County District Attorney’s Office, will serve 16 months in prison for embezzling more than $90,000 in supervision and restitution fees paid to the office.

Smith, 58, of Skowhegan, pleaded guilty May 6 to a charge of Class B felony theft and was sentenced Friday in Somerset County Superior Court to three years in prison, with all but 16 months suspended. She was also sentenced to six months concurrently for a misdemeanor tampering with public records charge and must pay $60,000 in restitution.

Smith at the sentencing hearing said, “I would like to apologize to the district attorney, my co-workers and the court. A lot of trust was placed in me and I failed horribly. I am truly sorry.”

Between April 2010 and October 2014, Smith stole $91,345 in cash paid to the Somerset County District Attorney’s Office in Skowhegan, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by Assistant Attorney General Leanne Robbin, chief of the financial crimes division of the AG’s office.

Smith’s thefts are part of what prompted Somerset and Kennebec counties District Attorney Maeghan Maloney to stop accepting cash payments for fines and fees in early 2015.

As an office clerk, Smith was responsible for collecting restitution and supervision fees. After generating either a hand-written or computer receipt for cash payments, Smith would put the money in one of two bags that she kept in her desk.

The money was collected each month by an office manager, who would generate a ledger sheet showing each defendant and the amount of money paid for the restitution fees and a similar collection sheet for the supervision fees.

The office manager and county treasurer were responsible for checking that the amount of money deposited in either the bank or at the treasurer’s office matched the ledger sheets, but no one ever compared whether the amount of money collected matched what was recorded in the computer system, according to court records.

In October 2014, a juvenile clerk in the office noticed $300 missing from the supervision fees when she went to make change for a defendant. She looked the transaction up in the computer system and found a record if it there, but the money was not to be found.

When Office Manager Lisa Davis asked Smith about the missing money, she told her she couldn’t remember where she had put it, then presented Davis with $300 from her desk in different denominations than what was missing.

It was at that time that Davis also discovered that some of the office’s receipt books were missing and that one book showed a discrepancy between what was collected and what was deposited.

A search warrant was executed by police at Smith’s home and she initially denied taking any money from the office, but later changed her story saying she was trying to pay off a real estate tax lien, according to the court records.

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