WISCONSIN RAPIDS – The former St. Vincent de Paul Marshfield Outreach Director October 21. was accused of stealing $108,549 from a charity.
Trisha L. Hebert, 37, of Marshfield, is charged with theft of more than $100,000 from a business, fraudulent use of a bank card and fraudulent use of a corporate officer. She is scheduled to make her first court appearance on December 1.
According to the criminal complaint, Hebert had been at St. John’s for nearly five years. under the leadership of Vincent de Paul Marshfield. She resigned in mid-August 2024 and worked until mid-September 2024.
In mid-August, a St. Vincent de Paul employee went to the Marshfield Police Department with financial documents and said she believed someone had embezzled money from the charity. The complaint alleges that the employee observed numerous cash withdrawals from ATMs, as well as money taken from a medical account that the employee believed were unrelated to St. Vincent de Paul.
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The employee said she believed Hebert took the money, but she had no proof, according to the complaint.
The employee also had a copy of a $3,169 check made out to Hebert, which Hebert signed on the bottom and endorsed on the back. The memo stated “123 for vacation hours,” the complaint states.
Detectives began looking at the transactions and found that someone had used the bank card at ATMs at a gas station in Marshfield and at numerous businesses outside the Marshfield area. Many of the locations where the bank card was used at ATMs were near casinos, the complaint said.
Detectives were able to film some of the ATM transactions and see Hebert using the ATMs, according to the complaint. They would see her withdraw $200 or more from an ATM, then buy cigarettes, snacks and lottery tickets.
When the detective spoke with Hebert, she said she had withdrawn money from the ATMs for the St. Vincent de Paul business and had not used the money for the items the detectives saw her purchasing in the video.
Hebert said she worked long hours, so she didn’t have time to go to the bank, so she used ATMs while she ran errands.
Hebert told the detective that she used the money to provide mortgage or rental assistance to St. Vincent de Paul clients, according to the complaint. She said the bank told her not to write checks for mortgage assistance because the bank could go to St. Vincent de Paul for the money if the customer defaulted on the loan.
Hebert cited several reasons for the drastic increase in applications for mortgage or rental assistance, according to the complaint. Hebert said he didn’t have time to document all the requests for help, but he kept track of them on a spreadsheet. She said the calculator was lost when her computer crashed.
The detective contacted several individuals who were listed as having mortgage assistance. He spoke with six people who were enrolled in home loans from the charity, but said they did not receive help, according to the complaint.
Hebert told the detective that she kept receipts in a binder folder with separate areas for everything she took in cash to buy for St. Vincent de Paul. She said the folder fell out of her car window when she was driving in 2024. attended a conference in Sioux Falls over the summer. She said there was heavy rain in the area and the binder quickly became saturated. Hebert said he took the receipts to his hotel room to try to dry them, but the rain caused the ink to run and they were destroyed.
Detectives found that many of the significant cash withdrawals, ranging from $1,000 to $5,000, were made within 24 hours of her gambling at the casino.
Detectives found Hebert removed $108,649 from St. Vincent de Paul accounts without recording where the money was used, according to the complaint.
If convicted on all three charges, Hebert faces a maximum sentence of 15-1/2 years in prison.
Contact Karen Madden at kmadden@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KMadden715, Instagram @kmadden715 or Facebook www.facebook.com/karen.madden.33.
This article originally appeared in the Marshfield News-Herald: Former Marshfield St. Vincent de Paul outreach director charged with theft