Woman Pleads Guilty to Embezzling More Than $9k From Norfolk Public Schools in 2019

NORFOLK, Va. — Cassandra Janene Meeks-Payton, 55, was convicted on Tuesday of felony embezzlement after she pleaded guilty to stealing more than $9,000 of summer school payments from Norfolk Public Schools students in 2019.

Mrs. Meeks-Payton was employed by NPS in 2019 as the summer school programs manager and was directly responsible for collecting cash and money order payments from students and their families for summer classes. A student’s completion of summer classes and reception of grades was dependent upon sufficient payments to Mrs. Meeks-Payton, who was also responsible for delivering those payments to NPS accounting. In 2019, 363 students were enrolled in the summer program, and NPS calculated the anticipated registration revenue to be $42,300. During that summer, Mrs. Meeks-Payton delivered only $32,830 of the anticipated $42,300 to NPS and embezzled $9,470 from the district.

In early July 2019, accounts receivable at NPS noted that Mrs. Meeks-Payton failed to deliver any funds collected since summer programs began. On July 8, 2019, Mrs. Meeks-Payton reported in-person with her first deposit, but accounts receivable immediately identified discrepancies between the revenue received and Mrs. Meeks-Payton’s receipts. Mrs. Meeks-Payton submitted a supplemental deposit on July 15, 2019, and informed accounting that she had another sum of money remaining elsewhere on a school property. NPS accounting again addressed inconsistencies in Mrs. Meeks-Payton’s receipts that day and attempted to help her with further paperwork by creating a spreadsheet for Mrs. Meeks-Payton to organize and rectify all the discrepancies between the July 8 deposit and then. For the following month, Mrs. Meeks-Payton avoided multiple attempted contacts from accounts receivable regarding the outstanding sum of money.

On Aug. 6, 2019, Mrs. Meeks-Payton delivered another incomplete deposit and promised to return with additional funds before close of business but failed to do so. NPS accounting then requested that Mrs. Meeks-Payton provide a reconciliation of total registrations collected at the school level, refunded, and deposited, and she again failed to comply. Instead, Mrs. Meeks-Payton falsely claimed that there were additional outstanding funds from various district schools that had not yet been collected. On Aug. 19, 2019, Mrs. Meeks-Payton agreed to meet with NPS officials to deliver the rest of what she owed, but she arrived empty-handed and claimed the money was in a safe at a relative’s house a two-and-a-half hour-drive away. The following day, after she was supposed to have retrieved the money she claimed to be elsewhere and deliver it to NPS, Mrs. Meeks-Payton did not return to meet with NPS officials. On Aug. 22, 2019, Mrs. Meeks-Payton emailed NPS officials that she would not be able to provide her receipt books.

In August 2021, the Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office secured an indictment from a grand jury against Mrs. Meeks-Payton for felony embezzlement. On Tuesday, Mrs. Meeks-Payton pleaded guilty to her charge, and Judge Everett A. Martin Jr. accepted her plea with an agreed maximum sentence of one year in prison. Mrs. Meeks-Payton is docketed for sentencing on July 12.

“Mrs. Meeks-Payton was not just stealing from Norfolk Public Schools, she was effectively stealing from the children of our city,” said Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi. “We appreciate the assistance of Norfolk Public Schools in the prosecution of this case, and we will seek a sentence appropriate to the trust that Mrs. Meeks-Payton abused.”

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney J. Drew Fairbanks is prosecuting Mrs. Meeks-Payton’s case on behalf of the Commonwealth.

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