A Sedalia woman has been charged with theft after stealing more than $30,000 from the Sedalia Girls Softball League over the last two and a half years.
According to a Sedalia Police Department report, Daisy Mae Hoover, 37, of the 1300 block of South Grand Avenue, was arrested at 8:50 a.m. Tuesday at her residence in connection with a large theft from the SGSL checking account.
Hoover was charged Wednesday morning with theft and two counts of fraudulent use of a credit device, according to online court records. She is at the Pettis County Jail on a $50,000 bond, cash or surety.
According to court documents, SPD detective Travis St. Cyr spoke with SGSL President Adam Cormican, who reported the theft in June and believed the suspect was Hoover, who serves as the league’s treasurer. He provided bank statements from 2014 to present.
The expense reports submitted by Hoover list two transactions at Walmart in Sedalia, according to court documents. Cormican said a few purchases at Walmart would be normal, but there were many more Walmart transactions on the league’s debit card, which Hoover had in her possession along with checks to pay league bills.
There were also multiple ATM withdrawals and other debit card purchases/payments on the account from January 2014 to April 2016, all of which were unauthorized, totaling approximately $26,464.48. Among the unauthorized debit card transactions were payments to Charter Communications and Capital One Credit Card, both to accounts owned by Hoover.
St. Cyr obtained video footage of the bank’s ATM showing a woman, identified as Hoover, making eight ATM withdrawals between March 8 and April 22.
Two checks had also been written out to “cash,” which Cormican told St. Cyr “there would never be a legitimate reason for those either.” One was from July 1, 2015, in the amount of $5,000 and the other was from July 16, 2015, for $1,000.
St. Cyr subpoenaed bank statements from Hoover’s personal checking and savings account to compare transactions. For example, after the $5,000 check to “cash” was written, there was a deposit in Hoover’s account the next day in the amount of $5,100. This pattern occurred numerous times.
When Hoover was interviewed Tuesday at SPD, she said she never wrote a check out to “cash” for anything, continuing to deny she was the one who wrote the checks even after being shown the checks. She could not provide an answer as to who would have written them.
She also claimed the $5,100 deposit was a loan from a company, not from SGSL, but did not have an explanation for the $1,000 “cash” check. She did not deny the payments to Charter and Capital One, but denied other personal bill payments.
“She said anyone that knows her knows that she is not the best record keeper,” SPD Detective Travis St. Cyr wrote in the probable cause statement. “I told her even the not best record keeper wouldn’t miss 12 to 15 transactions in a year at Walmart. Daisy said she understood that.”
According to the documents, St. Cyr asked Hoover if she started out by taking a little from the account with plans to pay it back but then it got out of hand. Hoover began to cry and shook her head yes.
The total amount stolen from SGSL since January 2014 totals $34,757.16, a number that shocked even Hoover when told by St. Cyr during her interview.
Cormican could not be reached by press time for comment on the incident.
