A former bookkeeper for the Special Olympics was sentenced this week to prison for stealing more than $163,000 from the nonprofit.
Victoria Jarvis, 48, of Mineral Wells, W. Va., will serve six months in prison, to be followed by two months of home confinement and three years of supervised release. She was also ordered to pay $120, 653 in restitution.
West Virginia U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin called the act of stealing from a charity like Special Olympics “intolerable.”
“This sentence should deter others who work in a position of trust from stealing from those organizations that serve our most vulnerable citizens,” he said.
Jarvis pleaded guilty to identity theft, admitting that from 2002 through 2008, while working for the state’s chapter of the organization, she used a computer and check creation software to counterfeit checks payable to herself.
She then placed the computer-generated signature of the CEO of Special Olympics on the checks, and deposited the checks into her personal account. She created about 108 fraudulent checks totaling $163,650.
The case was part of the U.S. Attorney’s Identity Theft Initiative, in which cases of identity theft are pursued at the federal level based on the vulnerability of the victim and the amount of loss. West Virginia State Police conducted this investigation.
The CEO of the West Virginia Special Olympics, whose identity was stolen by Jarvis, has yet to comment on the case.
Tags: Identity Theft, LifeLock, Special Olympics, West Virginia
