Written bySNOW HILL -- Tia Johnson was ordered to spend 90 days in jail for arranging and participating in multiple thefts from the Pocomoke City Walmart during the past two years while she worked for the store.
Johnson was charged earlier this year after Walmart officials confronted her for secretly loading gift cards, under-ringing merchandise and taking information off old receipts to benefit herself financially.
In court, she pleaded guilty to theft scheme of $1,000-$10,000 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail with all but 90 days suspended. She will also have to pay $1,860 in restitution.
From February 2009 through February 2011, Deputy State's Attorney Cheryl Jacobs said, Walmart estimates a total of $9,000 in revenue was lost as a result of Johnson's actions.
Jacobs said surveillance video showed Johnson under-ringing several people, charging them less than the marked price of the items they bought. On at least one occasion, the store documented those people going out to the parking lot and putting the merchandise in Johnson's car.
Angela DiPietro, Johnson's defense lawyer, said as part of the plea, Johnson was only admitting guilt in the thefts that took place during January and February of this year. Johnson's restitution of just under $2,000 stems directly from thefts in those two months.
"I made a mistake," said Johnson just before being sentenced. When Judge Theodore R. Eschenbeurg asked Johnson what her motivation was, she replied she wasn't thinking, and was being "dumb."
"This went on for quite a while," Eschenburg said. "It may have been a dumb mistake, but you made it over and over."
DiPietro said a friend of Johnson's family was "in a bad situation at the time."
"Sometimes people are in a tough spot, and they make a bad decision," DiPietro said.
Eschenburg did grant Johnson work release, saying he wants her to be able to keep her current job so she can pay restitution as quickly as possible.
In exchange for pleading guilty to the theft scheme, four additional charges against Johnson, including two counts of theft less than $100, theft less than $1,000 and theft scheme less than $1,000, were dropped.
The maximum penalty for the charge Johnson pleaded guilty to would have been a $10,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison. When combined with the additional misdemeanor counts, if Johnson had gone to trial and was found guilty of all five counts, she could have faced more than 13 years in prison.
Johnson has one previous conviction for theft for an amount less than $500 in Wicomico County in 2002.
In an unrelated court case, Worcester prosecutors forced Johnson to testify in the June murder trial of Justin Hadel, who was convicted of murdering Christine Sheddy, a mother of three. That conviction solved a prominent cold-case murder investigation. Johnson testified she was with Sheddy and Hadel in the days before Sheddy disappeared in November 2007 and that Hadel had confessed to her he'd killed Sheddy, whose body was discovered in a Snow Hill yard more than two years after her disappearance.
Prosecutors did not charge Johnson with any crimes connected to Sheddy's death, but they had to obtain a judge's order compelling her to testify in Hadel's trial. Hadel, who pleaded not guilty, was convicted on June 15 of killing Sheddy. He is set to be sentenced later this year.
Source; http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/20110715/NEWS01/107150311/Worker-s-theft-nets-90-day-sentence
$9,000 in lost revenue and only $1,860.00 restitution. Sooner or later Ms. Johnson's luck HAS to run out!! And it will........oh, yes it will.
