Patricia Adams Lambert,  an assistant superintendent and previously served as principal at the district’s Central Medical Magnet High School,  has plead guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges.  In return the prosecutor dropped three other charges.  The judge sentenced her to 40 months in prison and ordered her to repay the $500,000 she stole from the school.  She had siphoned off money from the school’s booster club, a student activities account, college credit courses, and on-campus snack concessions.

She used the money she embezzled to fund shopping sprees at Dillard’s department store, vacations to the Bahamas, a home remodel, and the purchase of a silver Lincoln MKX.  However, she is expected to repay the half a million dollars through a 25% deduction from her retirement pay.  Now, why would an embezzler get to keep her pension at all?  Secondly, her pension comes out to just over four thousand a month.  That means she would be paying only $1,005 a month.  Without interest, it will take her 41 years to repay the money she stole.

Considering she is 62 years old, she would have to live to be 103 to pay back the money.  Let me suggest this.  Her car was paid for with embezzled funds.  Why isn’t the car sold and the money go against the debt.  Her house was remodeled with funds she stole.  Why isn’t the house sold to go towards her debt?  She must have some savings.  Why didn’t any of that go to the payoff?

let’s say she lives to be 75.  That would be 13 years at one thousand five dollars a month or a total of 156,780.  A forty month sentence would be 20 months with good behavior.  How many people would be willing to do 20 months in a minimum security prison for $343,220 dollars?  That’s over $17,000 a month.

Lambert started as a teacher and quickly achieved numerous promotions based on the increase in mandatory testing score increases.  The problem is she faked the higher test scores.