Libby woman sentenced on second embezzlement charge

A Libby woman with a penchant for stealing large amounts of money from her employers recently pleaded to the latest offense Monday in Lincoln County District Court.

Jessica Marie Diller entered an Alford plea in front of Judge Matthew Cuffe. The plea means she doesn’t admit guilt but believes she would have been found guilty in a trial for the offense she was accused of committing.

Diller, who was already on probation for stealing several thousand dollars from Ace Hardware and Liberty Mutual in cases that dated back to 2013, was accused of stealing about $46,000 from the owners of the Evergreen Motel in Libby.

In August 2017, Diller received a concurrent deferred sentence of six years and was ordered to pay restitution of more than $25,000 for a fraudulent unemployment insurance claim and for stealing thousands of dollars from her then-employer Ace Hardware by floating personal checks for cash while making deposits for the store.

But it wasn’t long before investigators believed she was back to stealing money.

The most recent case came to the attention of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office December 2018 when two men whom owned the Evergreen Motel and Granite Studio Apartments, wanted to report that the manager of both properties, Diller, was embezzling money from them.

The men said that in December 2017, Diller was hired to manage of both hotels, less than four months after she was sentenced in her initial crimes in 2013.

According to the criminal complaint, the men said they had fired Diller in December 2018 because she hadn’t paid them rent money she owed after living in a home they owned.

The men became suspicious when the father of one them who owned another motel, noticed he had made twice the money his son did despite the fact his son’s motel had more rooms for rent.

One of the motel owners discovered Diller had been stealing the money when customers paid cash. The customers’ names were entered in the computer program and later deleted. But there was a tab in the program that Diller wasn’t aware of and the thefts were discovered.

The owners told officials they knew Diller had been accused of some things in Libby but didn’t know she had been convicted of embezzlement.

Diller allowed an officer to search her residence and

The investigating officer later learned that Diller’s parole officer had mailed a notification to the Evergreen Hotel, but the owners assumed Diller got it in the mail since she collected it. The parole officer also said he had mailed wage garnishment paperwork to the Evergreen because Diller owed restitution, but wondered why the owners hadn’t responded.

The owners then told officials that they had allowed to return to collect her belongings Dec. 17, 2018. They had set up a camera in the hotel office and had photographs of Diller getting on the office computer and allegedly deleting items from the program.

The owners believed Diller stole $46,000.

Diller’s total sentence is 15 years, suspended, in the Department of Corrections. If she violates her probation, Diller could face time in jail. She was also ordered the pay $20,000 restitution.