A federal judge has sentenced a former Starke County Jail employee to a year of probation for stealing over $21,000 from inmate commissary accounts.
41-year-old Pamela McDonald of Knox, who worked as the jail matron, was ordered to repay the money after she pleaded guilty to wire fraud.
McDonald devised a scheme to unjustly enrich herself by depositing commissary funds into her personal PayPal account while camouflaging the transfers as payments for legitimate invoices. McDonald also used a Starke County debit card to buy a video gaming chair, a memory foam mattress and a bedframe for her home.
In sparing her prison time, U.S. District Judge Damon Liechty noted that McDonald, whose husband is a sheriff’s deputy, had no criminal history, and that while she abused the public trust, she accepted responsibility quickly.
The judge wrote, “This will permit her to pay restitution too — that steady reminder each time she writes a check that crime never pays.”
