Man arrested in $48,000 theft from employer

HOT SPRINGS — A Hot Springs man was arrested on a felony warrant Tuesday in the theft of over $48,000 from a real estate company that he worked for.

Dustin Alexander Maddox, 34, turned himself in at the Garland County jail shortly after 1 p.m. and was arrested on a charge of theft of property over $25,000.

Maddox was later released on a $5,000 bond and is set to appear April 19 in Garland County District Court.

According to a probable cause affidavit, on Aug. 23, the owners of Signature Homes Real Estate filed a report with Hot Springs police saying that on July 27 they discovered a former employee, identified as Maddox, was spending company funds on personal items.

The owners reported discovering that the unauthorized charges, made using a company debit card, began in August 2021. They had documents showing hundreds of unauthorized transactions that totaled $48,738.20.

The owners said they confronted Maddox on July 27, and he immediately resigned. The owners provided detectives with a full box of the unauthorized paper transactions, the affidavit says.

Detective Matthew Cheatham met with the owners and reviewed the documents outlining the fraudulent charges.

He noticed that among the documents there were payments to the city’s water department. He went to the local office and reported that he was able to gain copies of the payments from the Signature Homes account toward Maddox’s personal water bill for his residence on High Meadow Loop.

Cheatham also reported obtaining a credit card statement from June and July that showed where Maddox made payments from the business account to his personal credit card account.

After further investigation, a warrant was issued for Maddox’s arrest last week.

According to court records, Maddox pleaded no contest to misdemeanor theft of property on May 6, 2008, and was ordered to pay $579.15 to Walmart in restitution and banned from the store.