Springfield woman pleads guilty to theft from Greene County Jail

A Springfield woman pleaded guilty yesterday to her role in a conspiracy to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Greene County Jail commissary account.

Terri Moses, 47, admitted she participated in conspiracy to commit bank fraud in a scheme that resulted in the jail’s loss of over $266,000, according to a news release from the office of Tammy Dickinson, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

The Greene County Jail commissary account is used to handle money earned by inmates, as well as expenses incurred when transporting and bonding prisoners. After being release from jail, an inmate is written a check from the account for any remaining balance. The physical checks included routing and account numbers.

The Greene County Sheriff’s Department discovered the theft in October 2011, when a review of the commissary account found 731 unauthorized transactions between March 2010 and October 2011. The transactions were conducted by phone and online, according to the release.

Moses and co-defendant Michaela Ruble, aka Boo, 33, of Springfield, recruited as many as 175 financially distressed individuals, promising to pay their bills in exchange for a 50 percent payment of each individual bill. Moses and Ruble diverted funds from the jail’s commissary account to pay the bills. Ruble was housed in the jail in 2011, when inmates received a physical check for surplus commissary funds.

In her guilty plea yesterday, Moses admitted she used the commissary account to pay personal bills and conspired with others to earn profit off the payments of bills. The jail lost $47,372 from Moses’ conduct, according to the release.

Co-defendants Christine Ash, 46, and Tia Marble, 34, both of Springfield, collected money and gave it to Moses and Ruble as part of the scheme.

Ruble was previously sentenced to four years in prison without parole. Ash and Marble each were sentenced to a year and a day, and all three were ordered to pay restitution. Moses’ sentencing hearing will be scheduled following a U.S. Probation Office presentence investigation, according to the release.