CLEARFIELD – A woman accused of stealing more than $9,000 in rent monies from the Dimeling Senior Center waived her right to a preliminary hearing before Magisterial District Judge Jerome Nevling on Wednesday during Centralized Court at the Clearfield County Jail.
Cara Marie Artiola, 31, of Clearfield is facing charges of theft by unlawful taking, theft by failure to make required disposition of funds; receiving stolen property; and forgery. Her bail is set at $10,000 unsecured.
According to the affidavit of probable cause, the Dimeling Senior Center hired Developac Inc. of DuBois to manage the senior center. Developac Inc. hired Artiola in 2011 as its general manager of the Dimeling Senior Center, and she handled the collection of rent monies from the tenants.
In December of 2012, a general manager at Developac Inc. noticed Artiola wasn’t depositing the rent monies in a timely fashion. Then, on Jan. 10, the Developac Inc. manager received a facsimile from Artiola for two deposit slips and two bank receipts for December rent monies that she’d deposited at CNB Bank. On Feb. 5, the Developac Inc. manager received a letter from CNB Bank, stating they’d been charged for having non-sufficient funds and a negative balance of $1,350.63.
The Developac Inc. manager had CNB Bank provide the two copies of the deposit slips for the December rent monies that Artiola had deposited. The deposits were in the amounts of $1,597 and $8,015. The Developac Inc. manager and CNB Bank compared the deposit slips that they had each received from Artiola and determined that the $1,597 amount had been deposited. However, they found that the other deposit slip for $8,015 had neither been passed nor authorized by CNB Bank.
According to the affidavit of probable cause, the Developac Inc. manager said at the Dimeling Senior Center, there are approximately four tenants who pay their rent in cash. On Feb. 7, Developac Inc. manager interviewed Artiola about the deposit slips and missing rent monies. Artiola said she’d “hoped” the rent monies wouldn’t be discovered as missing before her tax refunds arrived, so that she could deposit money. The Developac Inc. manager calculated the amount of rent monies that it should have received and then the amount of rent monies actually deposited. The amount of money missing from the CNB Bank account totaled $9,632.
On Feb. 12, Artiola e-mailed a letter to the Developac Inc. manager, stating she intended to pay off the amount she had defrauded Developac Inc. and the Dimeling Senior Center before the end of February. She indicated she was waiting for her income tax return of approximately $4,000, which she expected to be released to her before Feb. 26. As of March 5, Artiola had paid $1,800 in restitution and had $7,832 still due to Developac Inc.
On March 5, Clearfield Borough police interviewed Artiola. She admitted to stealing the rent monies that she was receiving from tenants at the Dimeling Senior Center. Artiola told police she started by taking rent monies from one person in May or June of 2012; however, it escalated until she was stealing all of the rent monies collected in cash. She told police she was using the stolen rent monies for bills and other expenses associated with being a single parent.
