FORMER HEALTH CARE EMPLOYEE GETS SUSPENDED SENTENCE IN EMBEZZLEMENT CASE

A former employee of the CareCo Shoreline home health company in Waterford who was charged in December 2015 with embezzling $21,864 from the company was sentenced Thursday in New London Superior Court to five years of probation and ordered to repay the victim $5,000.

Tammy L. Cholewa, 45, of Oneco had pleaded guilty in June to second-degree larceny. She pleaded guilty under the Alford Doctrine, indicating she did not agree with the state’s version of the case but did not want to risk a harsher sentence if convicted at trial.

Judge Hillary B. Strackbein imposed a sentence of 10 years in prison, fully suspended, followed by five years of probation. Cholewa’s case was headed for trial when her attorney, Sebastian O. DeSantis, struck a plea deal with prosecutor Stephen M. Carney. The judge ordered Cholewa to repay the victim $5,000 over the next five years and said the order could revert to a civil judgment against her if she fails to pay.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit written by Waterford Detective Michael Fedor, company owner Helga Pfanner notified police on May 29, 2015, that she had noticed unauthorized checks for small amounts of money made out to Cholewa or “cash.”

Cholewa was fired and Pfanner arranged for a forensic audit of the checking account that revealed Cholewa had stolen 77 checks, according to the affidavit. Cholewa sometimes asked other employees of the company to cash the checks made out to “cash,” while telling the co-workers the money was to replenish the company’s petty cash fund, it said.

After she was fired, Cholewa left a purse in her company car containing several stolen checks, according to the affidavit. Confronted by the detective during an interview at the police department, she said she was not responsible for the entire amount and that Pfanner had told her to use some of the money for “under the table” payments to employees.