Woman given 5 years of probation, pleaded guilty to taking $45K from Bluffton loan company
A Hardeeville woman pleaded guilty to stealing $45,000 from the Bluffton loan company she managed in 2019.
Laquandra Campbell, 37, of Hardeeville was sentenced Monday to five years of probation in lieu of a 10-year prison sentence for two counts of breach of trust with fraudulent intent, according to 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office spokesperson Jeff Kidd.
Campbell was charged in 2020 with stealing $45,000 from Advance America, a financial services company with a branch in Bluffton that offers cash advances and payday loans.
As the store’s manager, she was the only one with access to the vault, according to a report from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.
The company’s corporate office was first alerted to the missing money when a mid-September delivery of $35,000 was missing from its records in 2019 despite having been delivered in an armored truck, according to previous reporting from the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
The company sent a corporate employee to find the money and discovered Campbell had transferred $35,000 by wire to another store to cover it up, police alleged in the report.
A day later, another delivery of $10,000 was accepted by Campbell and never entered into the company’s records.
Campbell’s public defender, Taylor Diggs, did not respond to a voicemail and a text message. A Facebook message sent to Campbell was not returned Tuesday.
