Warrants issued for convicted embezzlers

SANDPOINT — Arrest warrants were issued Thursday for two Priest River residents convicted of embezzling from their respective employers.

First District Judge Barbara Buchanan issued bench warrants for Nicole Jody Lynn Love and Jasen W. Johnson after neither showed for hearings regarding compliance with their court-ordered obligations, court records show.

Love, 37, was convicted of embezzling from CityServiceValcon in Oldtown in 2010. Johnson, 51, was convicted of embezzling from Family Foods in Oldtown from 2002 to 2009.

Love was given a suspended two- to five-year prison term and ordered to serve 90 days in jail. She was ordered to pay $25,000 in restitution.

Love appeared in court last month to have the terms of her jail sentence modified due to a high-risk pregnancy. Love told 1st District Judge Barbara Buchanan that she was having contractions and her hearing was postponed.

Buchanan ordered that Love provide proof of hospitalization when she returned to court. But Love failed to appear at Thursday’s hearing and instead wrote a letter to the court asking for a continuance because she was on bed rest.

“I am not avoiding this at all. I am only concerned for my baby,” Love said in the letter to the court.

Love included documents indicating she had been examined at Newport Hospital, but there was no showing that she was indeed in labor, according to court records.

Love’s jail sentence was modified so she could serve it on weekends, although jail staff advised the court that she did not report to the facility on several occasions due to her pregnancy and other family medical issues.

Two people phoned jail officials last month to report that Love had faked labor pains to avoid serving her sentence, court documents indicate.

Johnson, meanwhile, failed to show at a hearing on Thursday to take up his compliance with court-ordered restitution in his case. Johnson, 51, steered clear of a custodial sentence due to kidney and heart problems that would have would have cost taxpayers as much as $300,000 a year to incarcerate him.

Johnson was ordered to pay $106,000 in restitution via monthly payments of $100, but court records indicate he has missed making some of the payments.

Both Love and Johnson entered Alford pleas to the grand theft charges against them, which enabled them to profess their innocence. However, the pleas were treated no differently than pleas of guilt at sentencing.