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A Honolulu woman accused of stealing more than $37,000 in school lunch money from an Oahu public school is scheduled to appear in court Sept. 19 on theft charges.
Ada T. Martin, 52, turned herself in Monday and posted bail.
She was indicted Thursday by a grand jury and charged with first-degree theft for allegedly taking $37,156.31 between July 2012 and April 2014 from Aliamanu Elementary School, where she worked as an office assistant. (To put the amount in context, elementary students pay $2.50 for regularly priced lunches. Students whose families qualify for reduced-price lunches pay 40 cents. Of the 641 students enrolled at Aliamanu Elementary, close to 33 percent qualify for free or reduced meals.)
The state attorney general’s office on Friday said that Martin, who also is charged with using a computer in the commission of a crime, manipulated the school’s meal tracker program.
The theft charge is a Class B felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine. The computer offense becomes a Class A felony because the underlying crime is a Class B felony, and is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $50,000 fine.
Martin previously pleaded guilty to first-degree theft in 1993 for food-stamp fraud, court records show. She was sentenced to five years of probation and 100 hours of community service, and ordered to repay $27,382 as a refund for overpayment for a roughly three-year period.
The Department of Education has said it brought the recent case to the attorney general because of concerns of possible criminal activity. Martin has been a DOE employee since 1995-96, when she was hired as a pre-audit clerk as an emergency hire. She was hired at Aliamanu in 2006 as a part-time clerk. The position was later renamed to office assistant.
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