- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
Former county education official booked for embezzlement case
LAKEPORT, Calif. – A former county education official who is alleged to have embezzled more than $100,000 from a local business has been booked into the Lake County Jail.
On Wednesday, 61-year-old George Tanner McQueen II was transported from Sacramento County, where he has spent the last six months in jail, and booked at the Hill Road Correctional Facility in Lakeport on a felony arrest warrant.
A Lake County Sheriff’s Office investigation found evidence that McQueen – a former Yuba College dean who also previously had worked for the Lake County Office of Education – had taken $103,000 from the personal and business accounts of a local couple for whom he was doing bookkeeping work, wiring the funds into his own business accounts, as Lake County News has reported: http://bit.ly/2oo1w1l.
In September, the sheriff’s office forwarded its findings to the District Attorney’s Office for review. Then, on Feb. 7, the District Attorney’s Office filed a criminal case and the following day a Lake County Superior Court judge signed an arrest warrant for McQueen.
Also in September, as the Lake County Sheriff’s Office was concluding its investigation, McQueen was sentenced in Sacramento and Placer counties for having stolen the identities of his adult son and daughter, as Lake County News first reported in September: http://bit.ly/2CxrYKN.
McQueen previously did jail time in Lake County after being convicted in 2006 of elder abuse for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a friend’s trust. He later moved from Lake County to the Sacramento area.
With McQueen just finishing his jail sentence in Sacramento, officials said the recent issuance of the new arrest warrant meant he would be transported to Lake County to begin the process of hearings for his new case.
McQueen is on a PC 1275 hold, which is commonly used with people accused of crimes involving illegally obtaining money. It requires a defendant to prove that the funds used for bail were obtained legally and did not come from criminal activity, according to the penal code.
He is tentatively scheduled to be arraigned in Lake County Superior Court on Friday.
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