justice money

Loretta Lizama Sablan had until Aug. 15 to repay nearly $105,000 she admitted embezzling from Whetstone-based Stan’s Fence Company. In exchange, she would be sentenced to no more than five years in prison as part of a plea deal negotiated by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office in May.

But a judge threw out that plea deal last month when Sablan announced she could not make the promised restitution. She has been ordered back to Cochise County Superior Court on Oct. 3 for a trial setting hearing.

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Sablan, 36, was indicted by a grand jury in May 2021 on nine felonies, including one count of theft and eight counts of fraudulent schemes. The alleged offenses occurred between February 2018 through January 2020 while Sablan worked as the office manager for Stan’s Fence.

The now voided plea agreement called for seven of the counts to be dismissed if Sablan pleaded guilty to two counts -theft and solicitation to commit fraudulent schemes- and made restitution. The two counts called for a presumptive 2.5 years and 5 years in state prison to be served at the same time, although Judge Timothy Dickerson had discretion to impose probation instead for one or both charges.

If probation was imposed, Sablan would have been required to serve 30 to 180 days in the county jail.

But the plea agreement also contained a provision allowing the attorney general’s office to withdraw from the deal if Sablan did not make restitution as promised.

The judge was advised during the Aug. 15 hearing that Sablan was willing to make “a partial payment” to keep the plea deal in place but could not make full payment. The amount of the proposed payment was not revealed in open court.

Instead, Assistant Attorney General Jordan Emerson informed Dickerson that the State was withdrawing from the plea deal, thus putting all nine felonies back in place. Sablan faces 25 years in prison if convicted of all counts.

Court records show Sablan came under investigation in January 2020 when one of the banks used by Stan’s Fence inquired about concerns with “out of the ordinary” transactions on the business account.

Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation spent months working with the company’s accountant to determine the extent of the theft. Sablan made incriminating statements during an interview with the FBI in February 2021.

If found guilty at trial, Sablan would be sentenced with one prior felony conviction on her record. She came under investigation in 2009 when the Sierra Vista Police Department responded to a call that Sablan had been physically assaulted and robbed outside a bank while making a deposit on behalf of a business.

Investigators later determined Sablan was “in on” the robbery in an attempt to steal the deposit money from her then-employer. She pleaded guilty to one count of theft, while a false reporting to police charge and a fraudulent schemes charge were dismissed as part of a no-prison plea deal.

Darryll Quinn Wilson, Sablan’s co-defendant in the 2009 incident, served probation and some jail time for his role in the robbery. He was taken into custody by officers at gunpoint before it was known that the incident was staged.



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