WATERVILLE – A former manager of Orchard Park Apartments in Waterville will serve 21 days in jail for secretly pocketing tenants’ rent checks.

Tina Eaton, 32, of Clinton has also been ordered to pay $21,000 in restitution.

Prosecutors said she was responsible for collecting rent from tenants, and often kept the cash payments. She was arrested after other apartment managers noticed the rent payments weren’t matching the occupancy rate, they said.

The crime went on for more than a year, from mid-1999 to last fall, they said.

Eaton was sentenced to three years in jail with all but 21 days suspended.