Village embezzler to serve nine months

Sarsfield deferred the start of Buttry’s term until Friday so that she could say goodbye to her two children, 18 and 14 years old.

County police, the foundation and the State’s Attorney’s office are still investigating the total amount taken from foundation coffers, which they now say is as much as $175,000, Stephen Chaikin, an Assistant State’s Attorney, said in court. Buttry has repaid $14,000 of that, plus interest.

Sarsfield agreed to temporarily set restitution at $130,000 and gave investigators 90 days to determine the full scope of the embezzlement.

Buttry’s father-in-law, who lives with the family, had agreed to make a payment of $100,000 on Tuesday, and Buttry has 90 days upon her release to pay the rest.

From 1989 to 2005, Buttry worked for the Montgomery Village Foundation, which acts as an umbrella homeowners association for more than 40,000 residents in the Village.

Between 1999 and 2005, police said, she executed 45 separate transactions that pulled money from foundation accounts — which are made up almost entirely by the assessment fees that the Village’s 12,000 homeowners pay — and deposited it into her personal bank accounts.

With $10,000 in staff costs, $28,000 in additional auditing fees and $67,000 in lost interest, the total loss amounts to $266,000, the foundation’s former finance director Lois Campbell testified in court.

The foundation is insured for the loss, but more than the financial hit, the embezzlement has rattled the community’s faith in the foundation, she said.

‘‘This is an institution that relies on the trust and confidence of its member residents,” Campbell said. ‘‘I believe the damage is such that it will be years before we can hold up our heads and say, ‘It happens all the time, this one happened under our watch and we missed it, but we’ve got it now.’”

Though it was only a sentencing procedure, the hearing dragged out past the 90-minute mark Thursday as her attorney Samual Williamowsky made an impassioned case for allowing Buttry to serve only home confinement. Williamowsky outlined a litany of medical and financial problems that put Buttry in a desperate situation. Dr. Fred Oeltjen, director of the Maryland Counseling Center in Frederick, attributed Buttry’s actions to a vicious cycle of depression and alcohol.

Given her chance to speak, Buttry explained that her family had fallen behind on its bills and a bank was foreclosing on their home. She also had to pay for health insurance, which she did not have through her part-time job with the foundation.

‘‘I was just extremely confused. I kept thinking that it was just a short fix, that I’d figure out a way to pay this back,” Buttry explained to Sarsfield. ‘‘Unfortunately, it just kept getting worse.”

Pat Huson, the foundation’s interim executive vice president, and Lois Campbell, who was the foundation’s interim finance director for the latter half of last year, refuted Buttry’s claims that she cooperated in the investigation. They said that the embezzlement has done profound damage to residents’ faith in the foundation’s ability to handle its finances.

‘‘I can’t tell you how many people have called my office to say, ‘Go after this lady; this is my money she stole,’” testified Officer Diane Tillery, community services officer for the county’s 6th District police station, who led the police part of the investigation.

Tillery said Buttry’s tactics included false invoices, duplicate checks, unauthorized wire transfers and falsified documents that drew $38,000 from a co-worker’s retirement account.

She also discovered that Buttry’s bank accounts paid for a family trip to Disneyland, several airline tickets and two weeklong vacations to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where the family rented luxury homes for $4,000 a week.