Northland woman faces felony fraud charge, accused of inflating mileage while delivering senior meals
A 81-year-old Foxboro woman accused of falsifying mileage reports to her employer, Senior Connections Inc., will make an initial appearance April 25 in Douglas County Circuit Court.
Evelyn R. Parker is facing one count felony fraudulent writings for an alleged pattern of falsifying mileage records.
According to the criminal complaint filed Monday:
Parker was scheduled to work two days a week at the Senior Connections nutrition site in the town of Summit, preparing food and delivering meals. She is paid an hourly wage and mileage.
The agency director recently noticed that Parker’s mileage reimbursement seemed high. She was reporting more than 100 miles per day for 4-6 deliveries, all of which were near Summit Town Hall, the meal preparation site. Another Senior Connections employee followed Parker on her normal route Feb. 2 to verify the mileage. She reported 52 miles but the employee who followed her calculated 41. The director looked into Parker’s logs for the past 10 years and found they were consistently high, 100 miles or more.
Detective Brad Hoyt with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department cataloged the false mileage claims and calculated that the total amount overpaid was $5,570.88. He noted that the discrepancies in mileage claims grew as time passed, a number of dates and routes were claimed more than once and there were several instances where the odometer readings at the start of the week were higher than the same entries at the end of the week.
When speaking with Hoyt, Parker said she wrote down a mileage number based on how much she felt she was due instead of how much she was actually due.
If convicted, the Foxboro woman faces up to six years imprisonment and a fine of up to $10,000.