| 114th Year, 23rd Issue | Thursday, January 16, 2003 | Sparta, North Carolina |
Patricia Nicholson Edwards last week received a sentence including two months active jail time on charges from a fundraising scam and a series of embezzlements.
Judge Edgar B. Gregory also sentenced Edwards to three years special probation and ordered her to pay a $1,000 fine and thousands more in restitution.
Edwards, 49, of N.C. 18 south in the Whitehead area, faced a total of 54 felony charges: 25 counts of embezzlement by a public official or trustee, 21 counts of obtaining property by false pretense, and four counts each of forgery of an endorsement and uttering a forged endorsement.
She pleaded guilty to the forgery/uttering charges, five counts of obtaining property by false pretense and one of the embezzlement charges during the Jan. 7 session of Alleghany County District Criminal Court. As part of a plea agreement, the remaining 40 charges were dismissed by the state.
The embezzlements took place over an eight-year period from October 1994 until October 2002, while Edwards was a teacher assistant at Sparta School. She was accused of embezzling from the Sparta School Gift Fund, for which she was secretary/treasurer. The forgery and uttering charges also relate to that fund; she passed four checks for the fund on which she had forged Michelle Todd's signature.
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