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BANGOR – The Levant woman who put a nonprofit agency in Old Town on the edge of insolvency by embezzling nearly $84,000 of its funds was sentenced Thursday to six years in prison with all but 18 months suspended.
Katherine Ratliff, 39, was also sentenced in Penobscot County Superior Court to two years of probation in a plea agreement with prosecutors.
She was ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution to Adoptive & Foster Families of Maine in Old Town.
That is less than one-eighth of the nearly $84,000 she pleaded no contest to stealing between July and October when she worked as the agency’s bookkeeper.
Ratliff stole more than half of the agency’s annual budget of $140,000, Barbara Ford, president of the agency’s board of directors, said after the sentencing.
The organization also is expected to recoup some of its loss from the sale of the furniture and appliances Ratliff bought for her apartment with agency funds. The group also is expected to receive about $6,000 left in Ratliff’s bank account.
Ratliff did not address the court Thursday.
Deputy District Attorney Michael Roberts recommended that Ratliff be ordered to repay what she most likely would be able to earn while on probation.
She paid her $1,000 per month rent with agency checks, Roberts told Superior Court Justice Joseph Jabar at the sentencing. Ratliff bought more than $5,000 in furniture and more than $2,000 in office supplies for personal use with agency credit cards.
“We’re pleased to have the sentencing behind us,” Ford said. “We are still in financial need, but with a lot of sacrifice from our board members and employees we’ve been able to continue to provide services. The services we provide are to some of Maine’s most vulnerable residents – abused and neglected children in foster care.”
One of the services the agency had to cut this year, she said, was scholarships for teenagers who leave the foster care system when they turn 18 and are considered adults.
“This has been a huge blow for people involved in the agency,” Ford said, “but it’s made us step back and ask ourselves the reasons we are out there. We can’t let these kids and their families down.”
The agency expects to recoup $20,000 to $30,000 once Ratliff pays restitution, her bank accounts are closed and the items she bought with stolen funds are sold.
Ratliff was arrested in October after AFFM employees discovered that Ratliff had written herself checks that exceeded her salary, Roberts told the court.
She has been held since her arrest unable to make bail at the Penobscot County Jail in Bangor. The time she has served will be credited toward her sentence.
Ratliff, according to Old Town police, had several dozen aliases and “quite a history” in other states. She is also wanted in South Carolina for financial identity fraud, but that state is not expected to seek her return to face charges there.
Roberts said the amount of money involved in Ratliff’s alleged crimes in that state was much less than the amount she’s been convicted of stealing in Maine.
jharrison@bangordailynews.net
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