Aug 3, 2018 5 min read

WAYNESBURG – A woman entrusted with handling Carmichaels Borough’s finances who used her position to steal nearly $75,000 from the municipality to pay for personal needs was sentenced to prison Friday.

Brandi Lea Wydo-Streit, 44, of Carmichaels, served as the borough manager until September 2016 when she admitted to the theft in which she wrote 89 additional paychecks totaling $74,965 between 2012 until 2016.

Wydo-Streit has not yet paid any money back to the borough, though she said during Friday’s hearing it was her intention to do so and she felt she had a moral obligation to pay the money back.

She pleaded guilty June 6 to 89 counts of misdemeanor theft as part of a deal in which prosecutors agreed to withdraw 89 felony forgery charges.

Greene County Judge Lou Dayich sentenced Wydo-Streit to spend one to two years in state prison, followed by five years of county probation. He also ordered her to pay at least $250 a month in reparations during her probation. Dayich said during the sentencing Wydo-Streit “abused a position of great trust” and was motivated by greed.

She owes Carmichaels borough $24,965 for the theft, as well as an additional $15,430 to the borough for the cost of a forensic audit performed by Cypher & Cypher. The borough’s bonding company covered $50,000 of the missing funds, and Wydo-Streit was not ordered to pay that back. An additional $2,000 request by District Attorney Marjorie Fox for costs associated with prosecuting the case was rejected.

The prosecution and defense argued over the legality of ordering restitution due to the precedent set by a state Supreme Court case that stipulates only individuals can be considered victims who are owed restitution, not public entities such as municipalities. As a result, Dayich decided to attach the reparations to the probation part of the sentence.

Borough Councilman David Antonini detailed the many obligations the municipality hasn’t been able to take care of due to the missing funds during the sentencing hearing. The borough has forgone street paving for the past two years, as well as reducing employee hours. The secretary and road maintenance positions there previously were full-time have been reduced to part-time.

“The residents of the borough have lost trust in the council and it will take a long time to gain it back,” Antonini said on the witness stand. “We don’t have the ability, at the moment, to obtain state funding, state grants.”

Wydo-Streit’s defense attorney, David Pollock, took issue with the freeze on state grants for borough projects being attributed to his client because that resulted in audits not being conducted between 2012 and 2016. It was not the secretary’s responsibility to handle the audit, he said, but the borough council to hire an outside auditor without one on staff.

Current Carmichaels borough secretary Kayla Longdon, who previously worked as the secretary for the borough of Clarksville, said she was appalled at the level of disarray she found the office in when she took over in November 2016.

“Coming into the office, there was a lot of paperwork that was not there or not filed,” she said, adding that there was no filing system in place, with outstanding and unopened bills scattered on the floor and desk.

She spent her first three months cleaning, filing and organizing documents with the help of borough council members.

Wydo-Streit apologized to the borough council members who attended Friday’s hearing, saying she never anticipated her theft spiraling out of control.

“I’m very sorry,” she began. “I thought that I could put the money back … not that I could try to get away with it.”

She said that she took the money to pay for her family’s needs and was motivated because she did not make enough. She said she did not have problems with gambling, drugs or alcohol.

After the theft, Carmichaels implemented stricter controls on its finances, including hiring an outside vendor to handle the borough’s payroll. The borough pays $65 per pay cycle for that service.

Officials were first alerted to the situation when Carmichaels police Officer Mike Gyurke attempted to cash his paycheck, but the bank had frozen the borough’s payroll account. He later contacted Wydo-Streit, who told him she would handle it, but then said, “(I’m) going to be honest with you, I stole the money,” according to court documents.

State police were contacted in October 2016 and a forensic audit by Cypher & Cypher revealed the missing funds, which showed Wydo-Streit stole $64,705 from payroll and another $10,260 from the general fund, according to court documents.

Antonini and another councilman, Charles Walker, declined to comment on the sentence after the hearing, but said they would like a chance to review the order to fully understand it. They planned to discuss it publicly at the next borough council meeting, scheduled for 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Wydo-Streit was taken to Greene County jail following the hearing and was ordered to remain there for 10 days to facilitate communication with her attorney in order to file an appeal. Dayich denied Pollock’s request for an appeal bond.