The former food
services office manager for the Valparaiso Community Schools (VCS) has been
sentenced to one year of probation, after she admitted appropriating funds
from the Food Services Office to cover her gambling losses at the casinos,
the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana said.
Julie A. Schroeder,
52, of Valparaiso, was sentenced last week to 12 months of probation--with
10 of those months on home detention--after pleading guilty to a charge of
theft from a program receiving federal funds, the U.S. Attorney’s Office
said.
According to a
pre-sentencing memorandum filed by her attorney, between September 2011 and
October 2013 Schroeder failed to make deposits on behalf of the Food
Services Office in the amount of $37,750.15.
“During the period
of her offense, Julie Schroeder began gambling at the casinos in Northwest
Indiana with significant losses without her husband(’s) and extended family
members’ knowledge, which she hoped she could recover by repetitively
returning the casinos,” the memorandum states.
Those gambling
losses were the “basis of her unlawful conduct in failing to make a number
of Food Service deposits,” the memorandum states.
Schroeder began her
position with the Food Service Office in April 2011, six months before she
started failing to make the deposits, the memorandum notes.
In January 2014,
Schroeder advised the VCS’s Superintendent and the Director of Food Services
“of her unlawful conduct,” which she believed would soon be disclosed by the
State Board of Accounts’ biannual audit of the VCS, the memorandum states.
In March 2014,
Schroeder made full restitution of $37,750.15 from personal savings and her
husband’s business credit accounts, the memorandum states.
Schroeder is also
undergoing counseling for a gambling addiction and is participating in
meetings of Gamblers Anonymous, the memorandum states.