Former Craft Bros Investments employee sentenced to reparations for embezzlement of more than $485K

A former employee of Craft Bros Investments has been ordered to pay restitution in the amount of almost half a million dollars – among other penalties, including a suspended 20-year jail sentence – to the company after pleading guilty to embezzling that amount from the organization over the course of approximately three and a half years.

According to documents from Forrest County Circuit Court, on May 3 judge Jon Mark Weathers accepted a guilty plea from Pamela Kimberly Lucas for one count of embezzlement of more than $25,000 and sentenced her to a fine of $3,000; a $200 assessment to the Mississippi Crime Victim Compensation Program; restitution in the amount of $500 to the Forrest County Public Defenders’ Fund; and restitution in the amount of $485,792.25 to Craft Auto Investments, which has two locations in Hattiesburg. Weathers also ordered the 20-year jail sentence, with the first three years to be suspended with post-release supervision.

If Lucas successfully completes those three years of post-release supervision, the final 17 years of her sentence will be suspended as well.

In January, a grand jury indicted Lucas on the charge, stating that the crime occurred between July 1, 2016 and March 31, 2020.

“(During that time, Lucas) did willfully, unlawfully and feloniously embezzle and fraudulently secrete, conceal and convert to her own use approximately $485,792.25 in U.S. currency, the property of Craft Bros Investments, which said sum of money had been entrusted to the care and possession of (Lucas) by virtue her employment at Craft Cros Investments,” the indictment reads.

Per terms of Weathers’ judgement, Lucas is ordered to pay $400 each month toward payment of fines, fees, restitutions and costs, beginning June 1 and continuing each month thereafter until the debt is paid off. At that rate of pay, it would take Lucas approximately 101 years to pay off the total sum.

For both periods of her post-supervision period, Lucas will be bound to several terms and conditions, including but not limited to:

• Committing no offense against the laws of Mississippi or any other state;
• Avoiding persons or places of disreputable or harmful character;
• Reporting to the Department of Corrections each month;
• Paying the required fee each month by money order;
• Permitting a field supervisor or probation officer to visit her at her home or elsewhere and submitting to a search of her person, vehicle or premises;
• Working faithfully at suitable employment so far as possible;
• Possessing or consuming no alcohol, mood-altering drugs or firearms;
• Submitting to any type of breath, saliva or urine chemical analysis for alcohol or drugs;
• Completing Alcoholics and/or Narcotics Anonymous meetings and/or other programs; and
• Obeying a curfew of midnight to 6 a.m.

“The violation of any one of the above enumerated conditions of post-release supervision or the good behavior non-reporting suspended sentence shall violate the terms and conditions of the defendant’s probation and/or good behavior sentence, and the court shall have the authority to revoke the defendant from probation and/or other non-reporting good behavior suspended and remand her into the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections to serve her entire 20-year sentence,” Weathers’ sentence states.