David and Amanda Mashburn’s guilty plea of taking money from the Hanging Dog Volunteer Fire Department caught many people in the area by surprise.
Hanging Dog – As more time passed without being caught, the amount of money taken during each transaction increased.
Documents filed in Cherokee County Superior Court show that Amanda and David Mashburn began stealing a few hundred dollars at a time in November 2016 and initially waited several days between transactions. The couple didn’t steal a dime in March 2017, but then resumed embezzling money from the Hanging Dog Volunteer Fire Department on a frequent basis in April that year.
After 11 months of spending taxpayer dollars for their own benefit without being caught, the married couple of 24 years began uniformly withdrawing $500 of fire department funds during each transaction, sometimes taking $1,000 in a single day. By the end of January 2020, the Mashburns had made nearly 200 illegal withdrawals.
Amanda pled guilty on Feb. 23 to one count of felony embezzlement, while David pled guilty to a single count of obtaining property by false pretense, also a felony.
Amanda wept after Judge William Coward sentenced them to a minimum of five months in prison, with the possibility of serving 15 months in custody if the couple does not pay full restitution and meet probation requirements.
“What happened had to be done,” Hanging Dog Fire Chief Kevin Carter told the Cherokee Scout via phone last week. “David was one of my best friends. We’re hurt, we’re angry, we’re sad. Two of our own fell, and that’s a hard pill to swallow.
“If they had stolen from me, personally, maybe we could have worked something out. But when you take from taxpayers, you can’t hide that.”
As treasurer of the fire department, Amanda had access to the organization’s debit card. Meanwhile, David served as vice president of the fire department’s board of directors and also led the unit as an assistant fire chief.
Each of the illegal transactions was a cash withdrawal from a bank ATM, so there’s no record of exactly how the Mashburns used the money, some of which was provided to the department from the state fire marshal’s office. However, Amanda’s attorney said the couple used the stolen funds for “day-to-day expenses” related to taking care of their family, which includes their parents, a child diagnosed with autism and another child diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
After losing the race to remain in the treasurer role, which forced Amanda to turn over the bookkeeping records in January last year, she and David told fire department officials they “borrowed” money from the organization and gave them a check for $20,000 in restitution. Documents filed in court show the couple stole a total of $96,302.50 via cash withdrawals and associated fees.
“An almost $100,000 [loss] to a small fire department is a massive hit,” N.C. Department of Insurance attorney R. Jordan Green said during the plea hearing. He added that the couple would have faced a minimum of 44 months in prison if they had crossed the six-figure mark, which could have happened within a couple months if Amanda had not been voted out of office.
Carter said the financial loss prevented the fire department from “going above and beyond” over the past few years, but the services it provides “never dropped to the subpar level.” At one point during the embezzlement scheme, Amanda fell behind on paying the department’s bills, which strained relationships with vendors, but Carter said the situation has improved.
“We’re not doing without; we’re doing OK,” Carter said. “We definitely have to be frugal, but I wouldn’t say we’re struggling.”
Today, officials are exploring options for regaining the fire department’s 501(c)(3) status, which lapsed prior to Amanda’s tenure. She was tasked with rectifying the matter and failed to do so.
Without tax-exempt status, the department cannot apply for federal grants. The department also may be fined for not filing the required tax documents in a timely manner. There’s even a possibility the fire department will have to apply for a new charter under a different name in order to start from scratch.
“She not only neglected to pursue the [tax-exempt] status but also began a pattern of theft, lies and neglect so that we are now further behind in the process than we were [when Amanda took office as treasurer],” Carter wrote in a letter to the judge explaining how the embezzlement has affected the department. “We were saving money for big purchases to update our equipment for the safety of our members and to potentially lower the insurance rating of our district. These incidents have put a temporary delay on those projects.”