A former employee is accused of stealing over $11,000 from a business in the Bloomfield area. A warrant was issued for her arrest last Thursday. She is facing preliminary charges of 12 felony counts of forgery and theft.

Amber Ankney, 28 years old, of Springville, is wanted on a warrant issued after a criminal case was filed against her in Greene Superior Court. The preliminary charges include six counts of theft where the value of the property is between $750 and $50,000, all Level 6 felonies, and six counts of forgery, all Level 6 felonies for a total of 12 felony counts.

This case has been under investigation by Detective James O’Malley of the Greene County Sheriff’s Department since February 11 when the owner and operator of Austin Memorial Arts reported one of his former employees had stolen money from his business. He said he didn’t think his business had the money he thought it should have and when he investigated, he found $12,000-14,000 was missing.

The owner told O’Malley that he had gone back over several months of records and discovered payroll checks had been written that should not have been issued. The checks were written in varying amounts but all were written to Amber Ankney. He said the checks written did not coincide with her hours worked.

Ankney, who was the owner’s niece, was hired in May of 2018. In October of 2018, she was terminated due to absenteeism. During the time she was employed, she did have access to the business checking account.

The owner provided O’Malley with a record of her hours worked, hourly wage and gross and net pay. He also provided a list of the cancelled checks that had been written on the account during her time of employment.

O’Malley was not able to reach Ankney by phone but he did reach her father then was able to interview Ankney at the sheriff’s department on February 18.

O’Malley reported that during the interview, Ankney admitted to writing checks, payable to herself, that were not authorized by the owner. She claimed two male co-workers had threatened to do physical harm to her and to her family if she did not write the checks. She named the two co-workers who she said were heavy into drugs and may have had gang connections. She allegedly said she wrote the checks, deposited them into her own account then the co-workers used her debit card and passcode to withdraw the monies from the fraudulent checks.

Ankney allegedly said, “I was writing the checks to give to them, I didn’t get anything out of it. I just didn’t want my family being hurt.”

After the interview, O’Malley obtained Ankney’s account records from her bank and found a very long list of checks had been deposited from the business account, written as payroll with Ankny as the payee. All were signed with the owner’s name, but he did not actually sign them and he didn’t authorize them. O’Malley noted there were no cash withdrawals in the exact amount that was deposited.

Next, O’Malley talked to one of the co-workers who said he had never used Ankney’s bank card, had no knowledge of the checks, had never threatened Ankney or her family and had never received any money from her.

On April 11, Ankney was questioned again and O’Malley explained there was no evidence that the co-workers had extorted money from her. According to O’Malley, Ankney then admitted to stealing the money for herself.

At the time charges were filed, the fraudulent checks written and deposited into her account totaled $11,153.76.

Ankney’s bond will be set at $48,000 surety with ten percent cash allowed. After she is in custody, she could be released by posting $4,800 cash.