Children’s advocate gets work-release in theft of funds

JEFFERSON COUNTY – Cheryl Fugett, former executive director of the Jefferson County Children’s’

Cheryl Fugett

Alliance, will spend two years in the county jail’s work release program and serve 10 years probation for stealing funds from the organization she managed.

Fugett, 60, was sentenced Monday in Jefferson County District Court, just shy of two months after a jury convicted her of taking more than $20,000 from the JCCA between December 2003 and the end of February 2007.

Prosecutors say she used the JCCA’s money to pay her daughter’s summer tuition at Colorado State University, personal dental work, roof repairs and repair work on the pool and hot tub at her Denver home.

Fugett also was convicted of writing more than $5,000 in checks on the JCCA’s accounts to pay her personal credit card bills and cashing JCCA checks she made out to herself, diverting thousands more for personal use.

The jury convicted Fugett was convicted of two counts of forgery and eight counts of felony theft on June, but was not present to hear the verdict. Instead Fugett, who represented herself in the three-day trial, skipped out on closing arguments and failed to return the next day when the jury, which deliberated for just an hour, convicted her of two counts of forgery and eight counts of theft.

A warrant was been issued for Fugett’s arrest and a $500.000 cash bond was entered because of her fugitive status.

Details of her return to custody were not immediately available.

Prosecutors called 20 witnesses “who described how Fugett repeatedly violated the trust of her board as well as those who provided funding for the non-profit” during Fugett’s trial, according to a spokeswoman for the DA’s Office.

Fugett was the “sole financial guardian” of the organization’s resources and she abused that power, prosecutor Sean Clifford told the jury, describing how she deliberately created a paper trail to mislead the organization’s board of directors and to keep their focus away from her by creating what Clifford called “dummy files” to camouflage her four years of theft.

District Attorney Scott Storey said the case was “tragic” because it involved a woman who had dedicated herself to helping children who are victims of abuse.

“It’s ironic that in her position of trust, Cheryl Fugett ultimately hurt the very people she was committed to helping by taking the organization’s money for her personal benefit,” Storey said.

The JCCA conducted forensic interviews with children who have been victims of abuse, using a child-friendly atmosphere to make recounting their trauma easier for the kids. The non-profit organization shut down at the end of 2007 and is currently merging its remaining assets with a similar facility in Arvada, according to the DA’s Office.