From the Laconia Citizen
Former Belknap County Finance Director Nancy Cook was sentenced Tuesday to 12 months in the State Prison for Women after she pleaded guilty to stealing more than $40,000 from the county.
Under the negotiated agreement with the state, Cook pleaded guilty to one count of theft by unauthorized taking and was required to make full restitution of the $40,601.99 that Asst. Attorney General Betsy Baker said Cook stole.
“I’m sorry if I’ve caused pain to anyone,” said Cook when given the opportunity to address Justice Larry Smukler in Belknap County Superior Court. She asked those she may have hurt “to find it in their heart to forgive me.”
Cook, 46, of 271 Pickerel Pond Road, Laconia, faced up to 7.5 to 15 years in prison and a $4,000 fine.
Through Mark Sisti, her attorney, Cook agreed that the prison sentence was fair but nonetheless requested consideration for home confinement.
Smukler, however, said what Cook had done “was not an impulse crime” but was instead a plot over several years that “took a level of sophistication and knowledge” to execute.
“A sentence has to reflect the aggravating as well as the mitigating factors,” said Smukler, and in the latter were that Cook had no prior criminal record, that she confessed and cooperated fully after the thefts were discovered during the county’s annual financial audit and that she had made full restitution.
But the aggravating factor was that Cook had been a public official with the county in a position of trust for 10 years and for violating that trust, a year in prison was a just sentence and an “opportunity” to repay her debt to the public, said Smukler in rejecting the home confinement option.
Had the case gone to trial, Baker said the state would have proven that Cook had access to an account from which, beginning in 2004, she began withdrawing money by forging the signature of the then-country treasurer on a check payable to “cash” that she then endorsed and cashed. Cook also used the money to pay for a $1,900 computer.
Neither Baker nor Cook or Sisti gave a motive for the thefts.
Sisti said his client was “more than cooperative” and wanted “immediate action” to dispose of her case which was why she pleaded guilty to the waiver of indictment.
“Before you today is an individual who is displaying significant remorse,” said Sisti, who added that Cook has a family, home and business in Laconia and had served four years in the military before beginning her job with the county.
“She’s highly educated; she knows what she’s done wrong; and she wants to get it right,” Sisti said.
He added that Cook is on medication for depression but she “does not want it to be an excuse for what she did.”
Home confinement, Sisti said, was not an issue that Smukler had to act on immediately, but it was an option that he hoped Smukler would give to the prison superintendent and, in that way “give her [Cook] some hope that she can join back in the community a little quicker.”
Baker objected to the home confinement, saying the prison sentence was fair and sent “a strong deterrent message” to others who may be contemplating similar actions. Home confinement was not appropriate, she added, because the amount of money Cook stole was “substantial.”