A 57-year-old former employee at Pantex Federal Credit Union in Borger, Texas, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay almost $800,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to one count of embezzlement from a federally insured credit union.

Dorothy Stegall Barnes worked as an assistant vice president of teller operations for Pantex and admitted to embezzling approximately $826,000 from the credit union from 1996 until 2010.

According to court documents, Barnes notified the credit union president that a teller had quit suddenly in October 2014. The credit union president asked Barnes to count the former teller's vault; after doing so, Barnes advised him that $380,000 was missing. An audit was then conducted, which ultimately revealed a transaction traced to Barnes in which she transferred $826,000 to her own teller vault.

Barnes admitted taking the $826,000 over a number of years; however, she said she was not involved in the missing $380,000 from the former teller's vault. She admitted that she covered up the transfers in a variety of ways and avoided detection by issuing fictitious cash-in tickets that made her teller drawer balance correctly. When she was audited, she would transfer money from her drawer after it was counted into her vault before the vault was counted.

Credit union officials located several checks that Barnes wrote to pay personal bills and other expenses from 1996 until November 2010. Barnes also said she took money to pay for “toys” for her husband, who has since died.

Pantex Federal Credit Union is the largest credit union in the Texas Panhandle, serving more than 16,000 members. It was founded in 1940 to serve Phillips Petroleum Company employees in Hutchinson County.

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