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City woman sentenced for Centra Health embezzlement

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By Carrie J. Sidener

Published: September 5, 2008

A Lynchburg woman likely will serve no active time for embezzling money from Centra Health’s School of Nursing.

Tracie Doss Baker received a five-year suspended sentence with two years of supervised probation from Lynchburg Circuit Court Judge Leyburn Mosby on Friday on an embezzlement charge. She also was ordered to pay more than $10,000 in restitution to the school.

Assistant Lynchburg Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Pflieger said the school’s own investigation alleges that Baker took some $42,000 over the course of seven years. Since she was only charged with one count of embezzlement, that charge encompasses only six months and during that time, investigators found that she took $10,625.

Pflieger said after the initial charge was filed, the school discovered the additional money missing. He said the nursing school has the option of attempting to recoup that money in a civil suit against Baker.

She worked in the administrative office and when nursing school students would pay in cash, she would pocket the money, Pflieger said.

“This was an outright theft situation,” Pflieger said. “The $10,625 is a very significant sum. The school had losses for seven years, in excess of the amount of restitution owed.”

Baker was arrested and charged with embezzlement in July 2007. She pleaded guilty to the charge in June.

Baker did not make any statements at her sentencing except to tell Mosby that she is not currently employed but is trying to get a job.

Mosby ordered her to pay $300 per month until the total amount is paid. She also is ordered to be on good behavior for five years, to undergo mental health treatment and to try to find employment to begin making her monthly restitution payment.

Reader Reactions

Posted by ( Cosmo Wafflefoot ) on September 08, 2008 at 4:24 pm

Strange but true (cvamom). [You ask]...“aren�t they audited by the State periodically?“.. PLEASE! The State is afraid of them. Centra-Health has MORE money than the State. When ever they send an auditor he has an unfortunate “accident”. They can’t count the money fast enough. They store bales of it in abandoned West Virginia coal mines under heavy guard. My sister Wanda, the one that works in the accounting department, told me that when she was going home late one night she heard the members of the Board of Directors singing, behind locked doors, in their plush meeting room. She didn’t get it all, but she wrote down a few lines. It went like this….[We’ll stick um with needles and feed them dead rats… We’ll cut off their buttocks and wear them like hats… We’re Centra, We’re Centra and we own it all… If you don’t have insurance go die in the hall”...] That’s all she could get of the song. Please don’t tell anybody about this. They put some kind of “chip” in Wanda’s head when she started work there. She ain’t been the same, but she’s a good egg and I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her on a counta me.

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Posted by ( cvamom ) on September 08, 2008 at 2:07 pm

WOW Cosmo…..that is unbelieveable!! I guess since she knows too much that is why it was easy for her to steal….aren’t they audited by the State periodically? I’m not an accountant so I’m not very knowledgeable in that part of business but it just seems odd to me. Thank goodness they DID catch it when they did or else she would have taken them for millions!

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Posted by ( scrivsand ) on September 08, 2008 at 11:57 am

Are they going to charge her with more counts to go back and get the other $30,000+? If not we all know who will be paying for that…the patients! Well I shouldn’t be surprised that she did not get jail time, when the chic that took over $220,000 from Wachovia only got 3 years, but the kicker for her is she will spend the rest of her life paying that money back and all of it not just part of it.

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Posted by ( Cosmo Wafflefoot ) on September 08, 2008 at 11:35 am

I can clear that up for you (cvamom). My sister Wanda works in the accounting department at Centra-Health. She tells me that the money comes in so fast and is piled up so high that they are 7 YEARS behind in counting it. (They bale the cash with a bailing machine in the basement and haul the bales out of town at night on flat-bead trailers.) She got such an easy sentence because she “knows too much”. With the kind of sense of humor the bill collections department has down at Centra…. she is lucky she didn’t end up an organ donor, if you know what I mean.

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Posted by ( cvamom ) on September 08, 2008 at 9:08 am

My question is - why did it take 7 years for them to figure out what was going on? If she took money from cash payments, then the payments were bound to have not been credited to the accounts of the people paying them….it just seems to me that they should have figured it out before they did….or maybe they did but just couldn’t pinpoint where the money was going….either way, it is a shame that people feel like they need to steal from their employers. Good luck to her finding another job.

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Posted by ( Cosmo Wafflefoot ) on September 07, 2008 at 6:02 am

Heck, that doesn’t even cover the cost of one minor heart attack. I’m surprised they even missed it!

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Posted by ( looksee ) on September 06, 2008 at 4:28 pm

I thought that 10,000.00 dollars or more was considered grand theft, and this person is serving 0 time? Makes one wonder who she is related to in the judicial system!??

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Posted by ( LeeA ) on September 06, 2008 at 8:06 am

It will be interesting to see who will hire the theif.

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