Former Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office employee sentenced for embezzlement
- Lake County News reports
- Posted On
NORTH COAST, Calif. – The former employee who embezzled $34,160 from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office from August 2016 through October 2017 was sentenced to local prison on Tuesday morning.
Melissa Alcala Alvarez (Perez), age 28, of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was sentenced in the Mendocino County Superior Court to 76 months in local prison, according to the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office.
In April Alvarez entered guilty pleas at her arraignment, as Lake County News has reported.
She was charged with stealing public funds over a 16-month period from August of 2016 to November 2017 while she worked as a financial analyst and handled cash receipts.
Her overall sentence was "split" between 18 months incarceration and 58 months on mandatory supervision, which is a realignment form of parole. At the end of the hearing, the defendant was handcuffed and remanded into custody, the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office reported.
Local prison, also known locally as realignment county prison, was created in October 2011 when the Legislature passed the realignment laws, laws which removed 500 felonies from state prison eligibility in an effort to reduce state prison crowding.
However, by requiring defendants convicted of one or more of the 500 felonies to serve any prison sentence imposed in the county jails resulted in overcrowding in most, if not all of the county jails across the state.
By prearrangement, it is believed that Alvarez will be serving her jail time in a jail facility outside of Mendocino County.
With good time and work time credits pegged at 50 percent, she will have to serve at least 9 months in jail before being released to mandatory supervision, officials said.
The prosecutor who argued for a prison sentence on behalf of the people on Tuesday morning was District Attorney David Eyster. Sheriff Tom Allman also addressed the court.
The investigating law enforcement agencies were the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office and the District Attorney's Office’s own investigators.
The sentence was imposed by Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman.