FraudBaron.com

Judge Susan B. Handy made those remarks as she sentenced Cross, 53, of Ledyard, to an additional seven months in prison for embezzling from the Gales Ferry Cemetery Association and the Ledyard High School Alumni Association.

Cross will be on probation for five years when she is released and, during that period, will be making monthly payments toward restitution to the three organizations.

Cross, a longtime town employee and volunteer, was serving an eight-month sentence for stealing $152,000 from her employer, the Water Pollution Control Authority, when the other cases came to light.

The judge ordered Cross to pay $300 a month to the WPCA and $100 a month to both the cemetery association and the alumni association. The restitution payments are limited to the five-year probationary period, which is the maximum the court could impose. If Cross comes into a“windfall” during that period - perhaps winning the lottery or receiving an inheritance - she is to repay the organizations the entire amounts stolen.

As part of her plea agreement, Cross and her family waived the ownership of six plots in the Gales Ferry Cemetery.

Cross wrote checks to family members using the stolen funds, including one to pay for her daughter's wedding reception. In a letter to the court last month, she wrote that she had become addicted“not to drugs or alcohol, (but) to spending money.” She said she had been struggling with family issues in the last five years and“there were days I know I could not think straight.”

”I now realize all the good I have tried to do for others has been wiped out by these terrible mistakes,” Cross wrote in the letter from prison.

She was charged in December 2007 with stealing more than $14,000 from the Gales Ferry Cemetery Association, for which she served as volunteer sexton for years. She pleaded no contest in February and was to be sentenced to an additional 90 days in prison when the third case came up.

Cross was charged last month with embezzling $5,784 from the alumni association, and Ledyard police in that case uncovered what prosecutor Lawrence J. Tytla said Monday was the“closest thing to a smoking gun.”

Cross had written an alumni association check for $3,190, payable to cash, on Nov. 15, 2004. A day later, she paid the same amount to Groton Inn & Suites for her daugther's wedding reception.

Though she completed her first sentence last month, Cross had remained in prison in lieu of bond while the other two cases were pending. On Monday she pleaded no contest in the alumni association case and was sentenced on the spot for the two pending cases.