AUBURN — A Harpswell woman was sent to prison Wednesday for three years for embezzling more than $80,000 from the Lewiston Ramada Inn last year.

Carrie Richardson, 39, appeared in Androscoggin County Superior Court where a judge imposed a sentence of seven years in prison, but suspended four years. When she’s released, she’ll be on probation for three years.

She’ll be credited for the time she’s remained in Androscoggin County Jail in lieu of $250,000 cash bail since her arrest last summer. She was considered a flight risk.

Richardson pleaded guilty in September to a single count of Class B theft, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Richardson sought to serve fewer than three years in prison, arguing she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder because she’d been sexually abused.

She had worked at the Ramada Inn in Lewiston from January through December last year as an office manager and bookkeeper. When the inn closed out its books at the end of the year, the audit showed more than $60,000 in cash was missing, as well as $16,000 in checks that Richardson had written to herself.

The stolen money came from cash that she failed to deposit more than 100 times at the hotel’s bank, and pocketed instead, according to court records.

The day she was fired, police said she went back into the office before leaving and took that day’s cash receipts.

She then worked at a payroll business in Brunswick where she wrote unauthorized checks to herself, but she was never charged for those actions.

Richardson was wanted on warrants out of California where she is accused of stealing roughly $100,000 from a Pop Warner football program in the San Diego area over a three-year period. She’s also accused of stealing nearly $50,000 from a business in San Marcos, Calif.

Richardson, along with her family, reportedly fled authorities in California. They left behind all of their belongings, including their pets.

cwilliams@sunjournal.com

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