Former councilwoman will serve house arrest
She was removed from Greenacres post after link to School District theft.
Lisa Rivera, who was on council in Greenacres, accused of stealing $23,000 in School District job.
WEST PALM BEACH — Former Greenacres Councilwoman Lisa Rivera was sentenced to six months’ house arrest and five years’ probation Tuesday as part of a plea agreement.
Rivera, 47, was originally charged with grand theft in June after she was accused of stealing more than $23,000 from the Palm Beach County School District while she was treasurer at Boca Raton High School. She pleaded guilty to a lesser misdemeanor count of petty theft.
Rivera will have until Feb. 8 to turn herself in. Her defense attorney, Michael Salnick, told Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley that Rivera had been previously approved for house arrest back when he and Assistant State Attorney Dan Reiter had been close to finalizing a plea deal last year.
Under the terms of the agreement, Kelley withheld a finding of guilt against Rivera, meaning she could be eligible to have the charge expunged from her record after she completes probation. She also had to resign her position from the Palm Beach County
School District, agree never to apply for a position there again and forfeit her pension.
Rivera was suspended from her position in Greenacres government by Gov. Rick Scott in June.
Her deal mirrors the same agreement that former Bak Middle treasurer Cathleen Spring took in October on criminal charges tied to claims that she took more than $66,000 from that school’s coffers.
School District detectives say that Rivera, 47, stole tens of thousands of dollars from the school between 2013 and 2015 by pulling cash from deposits left in the school’s safe and replacing the missing money with checks paid to the school but never registered.
Auditors say they had caught on to the scheme by September 2015, six months after Rivera was elected to a seat on the City Council. Less than three weeks later — after the School Board’s inspector general made a surprise inspection of the school safe — Rivera resigned abruptly from her school position, according to an arrest report.