Virginia woman convicted of embezzling more than $112K from auto dealer

According to court records, 45-year-old Angela Ann Harless worked at the Marion car dealership and between September 2022 and October 2023 took a total of $112,145.90, sometimes depositing it into her personal bank account and other times pocketing the cash.

In interviews with police, Harless came clean about the crime, according to court documents, and cooperated with the investigation.

In addition to her probation and restitution sentence, Harless was also given a five-year suspended prison sentence. Should restitution payments cease, Commonwealth’s Attorney Phillip “Bucky” Blevins said the commonwealth would seek a revocation of the suspended prison time.

Blevins explained that in cases in which large sums of money are taken, victims typically prefer a sentence that will allow them to be repaid the money they’re owed.

“Sometimes, the victim prefers to be made whole and get paid as opposed to seeing their offender go to jail,” he said.

In cases in which the victim wants jail time, he said, his office will seek it.

Harless’ case is one of a number of embezzlement cases to hit the court system over the last two years. Blevins noted an uptick in such cases, saying that since he took office in January, Smyth County had seen nearly $200,000 in embezzlement cases.

In January, a Marion woman was handed a similar sentence after she was convicted of embezzling about $50,000 from Automotive Connection in Atkins during her employment with that dealership.

Earlier this month, a Sugar Grove woman received her second embezzlement conviction in less than a year. Kelly Ann Gotham pleaded guilty last August of taking a large sum of money from Atkins-based Pro Erectors, where she had been employed. In March she was indicted on the second charge. In the second case Blevins said Gotham was working as a personal attendant for a man when she charged more than $2,400 to his credit card.

Having violated the terms of her probation by collecting new charges, Gotham’s probation was revoked and she was sentenced to spend six months in jail on the violation. She was given an additional 20-year suspended prison sentence on the second embezzlement charge.

Several other cases, Blevins said, are still coming down the pipeline.

“When I was running for commonwealth’s attorney, I thought my biggest challenge is going to be drugs, and it certainly is,” Blevins said. “We’ve got drugs, we’ve got rapists, we’ve got murderers, but what we also have is these white-collar criminals that I was either turning a blind eye to or wasn’t aware of as much as what I should have been.”

Prosecuting such crimes, he said, is a crucial step in protecting the citizens and businesses of Smyth County, particularly when a case involves home healthcare workers hired to take care of the elderly.

“So, we’re taking a very hard look at that,” he said.

Other embezzlement cases pending in the Smyth County court system include one against a Honaker woman accused of draining her step-father’s bank accounts while he resided in two separate nursing homes and using his Chilhowie home as collateral for a bank loan.

That case is set for trial in August.