A Torrington woman accused of stealing around $62,000 from the local Little League Association said she did so during her “manic” phases, investigators say.
Megan Leann Jonas, 36, faces one count of felony theft, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and $10,000 in fines. Her case rose Thursday to the felony-level Goshen County District Court. She’s set for an April 23 arraignment.
The Torrington Little League Association president Thomas Hoffman approached Torrington Police Department Officer Matthew Davis at the department the morning of Feb. 11 to report a conversation he’d had with group treasurer Megan Jonas, according to an evidentiary affidavit filed in the case.
Jonas had approached Hoffman earlier to say she’d done something wrong, and stolen money from the league, the affidavit says.
Hoffman didn’t know what to do so he ended the conversation and started investigating the group’s accounts.
Jonas had been the Little League treasurer since 2022. Hoffman concluded after going through the group’s banking history that Jonas had written 46 checks to herself which had been cashed or deposited.
The sum total of those checks was almost $62,000, Davis related from the interview.
There was no way to count the true loss, the president added, since Jonas also had access to cash from the concessions and donations processes, “not to mention any debit card activity, which they had yet to look into.”
The officer asked Hoffman if Jonas may have had a valid reason for writing those checks to herself. Hoffman said he couldn’t think of one.
“There would almost never be a time where Jonas would have had to use any of her own money to purchase something for the league which would necessitate her being recompensed,” since she already had access to its accounts, the affidavit says.
At about 1:30 p.m., Jonas came to the police department to speak with Davis. He escorted her to the interview room and read her her rights, says the document.
“As I was ordering my thoughts, Jonas simply began to tell me about some mental health issues she had for a number of years and then went into outlining that she had simply written out the checks to herself,” wrote Davis. “Jonas explained that she believes that almost all of the checks were written during her ‘manic’ phases, but that she felt ‘no guilt’ about the theft at the time.”
She said she’d later feel guilty about having done that but would forget or repress it. She guessed she’d taken about $30,00, the document says.
Davis and a detective asked “clarifying” questions, then arrested Jonas and took her to the Goshen County Detention Center, Davis wrote.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
