Quicksilver Softball team will receive $4,768 in restitution from its former treasurer, Christine A. Torres, who was recently sentenced in Barton County District Court for five counts of forgery. She was also ordered to spend 45 days under house arrest and 18 months on probation.
Torres was the treasurer of Great Bend’s Quicksilver Softball team in 2014 when she started writing checks to herself on the organization’s account. In 2015, club president Ryan Bownes got a call from Farmers Bank and Trust notifying him the Quicksilver account was overdrawn.
“We’d been in the hole two or three months,” Bownes said, adding there should have been between seven and eight thousand dollars in the account.
After checking the records, Bownes found that his signature had been forged on more than a dozen checks, and former president Korey Burkhardt’s name had been forged on other checks. An emergency board meeting was called, and Torres was confronted.
“She denied it,” Bownes said. Law enforcement was contacted and the bank worked with the club to bring its balance back into the black.
Thrown a curve
Quicksilver is a traveling fastpitch softball organization for girls 8 to 18 years old. This year the organization has six teams.
Money raised by the organization pays for such things as entry fees, uniforms and equipment, Bownes said. Two years ago, when he learned the club’s account was overdrawn, it was during the off season and club members scrambled to refill the coffers.
“It took two or three fundraisers to get in a position for the next season,” he said. Thanks to “very hard work from the kids, parents and board,” the financial loss did not keep the team from moving ahead. “The community really helped us get back on our feet.”
51 charges
On Oct. 25, 2016, Torres was booked into the Barton County Jail on 51 charges: 17 counts of forgery, and 34 counts of theft or, in the alternative, theft by deception.
Checks ranged from $250 to $1,260 written from 2014 to 2016.
In March Torres waived her right to a preliminary hearing and entered pleas of “no contest” to the first five counts. Under terms of a plea negotiation, the remaining counts were dismissed.
House arrest
District Judge Ron Svaty found her guilty and set her sentencing date for May 12. On that date, he sentenced Torres to eight months in custody on each count, with the sentences running concurrently. That will be followed by 18 months of probation.
Under state sentencing guidelines, Torres will not have to spend time in prison, but she is required to spend a minimum of 45 days in the county jail.
“I’m going to order it house arrest and probation,” Svaty said at her court appearance. He ordered Torres to get an ankle monitor and to go no further than her house, including her yard, during the sentence. She had credit for one day in the Barton County Jail, where she was released on Oct. 26, 2016, after posting a $10,000 surety bond.
Svaty reminded Torres that she is now a convicted felon. Under Kansas law, she cannot have a gun for five years; under federal law, she can never own a gun. She also has the right to appeal the sentence.
The fees Torres must pay total $9,696. In addition to the $4,768 in restitution to Quicksilver Softball, she will pay $800 restitution to Farmers Bank.
