Fired Bethany-Warr Acres worker sentenced to prison

A fired wastewater treatment plant employee was ordered Wednesday to serve more than three years in federal prison and pay nearly $1 million in restitution for stealing from the Bethany-Warr Acres Public Works Authority.

“I’m very sorry for what I’ve done,” Helen Rose Dewey told an Oklahoma City federal judge during Wednesday’s sentencing. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I’ve done since being fired.”

She told U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange that she stole the money to help pay for her grandson’s medical needs.

“If I didn’t pay for them, I felt terrible,” she said. “He needed leg braces, therapy.”

Restitution ordered

The

judge

ordered Dewey to pay $974,034 in restitution to the public works authority and serve 37 months in federal prison.

Prosecutors reported Dewey’s forfeited pension plan containing $268,749 would go toward that restitution amount.

The judge, though, also ordered her to pay $233,674 to the IRS.

Dewey wiped tears from her eyes after the judge issued the punishment.

Dewey, of Oklahoma City, pleaded guilty in November to wire fraud and tax fraud. She was 61 at the time, records show.

Trusted employee

Prosecutors accused Dewey of embezzling $974,034 from her employer between January 2008 and August 2013.

“The defendant used her position as a trusted employee at the water treatment plant to utilize the public works authority’s credit cards for her own benefit,” prosecutors alleged. “Thereafter, she altered purchase orders in order to conceal the itemized purchases on ... receipts.”

Dewey often used the credit cards to purchase gift cards and other personal items, court documents show.

She had been authorized to use the credit cards to make purchases for the treatment plant, court documents indicated.

Bryan Taylor, the chairman of the public works authority and mayor of Bethany, attended Wednesday’s sentencing.

The mayor told Miles-LaGrange that when Dewey stole from the public trust, she was stealing from each family in Bethany and Warr Acres.

Court documents show Dewey began her employment at the treatment plant in 1988 and was fired in 2013.