HATFIELD AND BOWEN TOOK AROUND $200,000 SINCE 2019, INCLUDING PAYING PERSONAL PHONE AND POWER BILLS ARREST CHARGES SAY
FT. GAY MAYOR JOETTA HATFIELD
SHEILA PRESTON BOWEN
The mayor Joetta Hatfield, and town recorder Shelia Bowen, are in serious trouble! They were arrested today in Fort Gay on multiple felony charges including embezzlement, falsifying accounts, money laundering and conspiracy.
According to criminal complaints filed in Wayne County Magistrate Court, the charges stem from their work for the town of Fort Gay in incidents dating back to March 2019. Bond was set at $25,000 for each woman and both posted bail.
Both women will appear back in court for a preliminary hearing.
The complaints allege that Hatfield and Bowen hid the embezzlement schemes from the town council by omitting information and falsifying financial documents the council used to make financial decisions for the town.
According to the complaint, both Hatfield and Bowen had signature authority for town bank accounts, as well as access to the town’s checkbooks and debit cards. Part of Bowen’s position involved reconciling all town accounts and preparing financial reports.
Hatfield and Bowen would allegedly use the checkbooks of various town accounts to write themselves checks “that were later negotiated by the suspects,” but those checks were not authorized by the town council. there was also never any documentation to support the checks, the complaints say.
The suspects’ unauthorized payments allegedly included 107 checks written to Hatfield, totaling $96,425.20, and 103 checks written to Bowen, totaling $94,540.14. Bowen and Hatfield both allegedly signed all the checks to fulfill the two-signature requirement, the complaints state.
The complaints accuse Bowen of using a total of $8,572.75 of the funds taken from the town accounts to pay her private electric bill over 15 different instances, and $16,036.64 to pay her phone service bill over 53 different instances. The complaint also states she allegedly admitted to using the funds to pay her bills in a recorded audio statement.
According to the complaint, Bowen also said in that recorded statement that she and Hatfield would allegedly meet in her office on Mondays to go over the registers and decide what payments to alter or omit.
The complaints accuse Hatfield of using the town’s general, sewer and water debit cards 225 times to withdraw a total of $125,243.50 from ATMs in Kentucky and West Virginia. According to the complaint, she admitted to the withdrawals in a statement and said she made them without the council’s knowledge or permission.
The complaint against Hatfield also states that she and Bowen took over the accounts as signature authorities in July 2017, shortly after they took office. The complaint accuses Hatfield of starting to route checking statements from the town’s post office box to her own around that same time.
Hatfield is also accused of using Fort Gay Water Works money to pay for her own telephone service 29 times, for a total of $3,909.97 and using various accounts’ funds to pay for her electric bills 14 times, for a total of $8,908.09, the complaints say.
According to the complaints, Bowen allegedly stated the registers “were a mess” and it could be impossible to figure out what all had been altered.
Information for this story from WSAZ and WOWK news stations.
