Lawyers representing former anti-violence coordinator Jennifer Beeman have sought a plea deal in her embezzlement case.
The plea deal would form an agreement between Beeman’s defense and the prosecutors, in which Beeman would plead guilty to certain crimes to avoid facing a jury.
“I don’t think she’s going to be avoiding any serious offenses,” said prosecutor Michael Cabral. “She faces charges for one kind of embezzlement and the rest are identical. They are all various types of misappropriations of public funds.”
Cabral said that the maximum sentence Beeman faces is 11 years and eight months in a state prison.
In the criminal case, Beeman faces charges of embezzlement by a public officer, misappropriation of public funds, false accounting and falsifying or altering an account. She does not face charges for her misreporting of crime statistics – an inflation that brought attention to Beeman’s shady character in the first place.
After Beeman’s misreporting, university auditors investigated the Campus Violence Prevention Program budget and found that she had embezzled between $2,000 and $13,000.
Evidence showed that she withdrew $5,400 of the approximately $12,000 allotted to the Women Take Back the Night event for personal use. Additionally, Beeman paid Granate Sosnoff roughly $540,000 to develop an anti-violence guide that was never completed, according to the audit.
“We’re trying to reach an amicable agreement on the appropriate sentence,” Cabral said to The Sacramento Bee reporters regarding the plea deal.
Beeman’s next scheduled trial is April 16, and Cabral said he expects to reach an agreement by then.
– Lauren Steussy
