Sentencing delayed in school district embezzlement case

The sentencing for a former Davis School District secretary who embezzled $333,133 in education funds has been put on hold to give attorneys time to negotiate.

Stella Smith was scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday but a last-minute call to U.S. District Judge Dee Benson's office put the hearing on hold until April 10.

Last October, Smith admitted to defrauding the Davis School District to help keep her household budget "afloat" under pressures of health and family problems.

Smith pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and admitted that while working as the secretary in the Title I program from 1993 to 2005 she submitted orders to the school district for text books that the district never received. The billing company was one that Smith herself set up.

Smith's former boss, Susan Ross and her husband John Ross, are both charged with bilking the school district out of $4.3 million in federal education funds by selling the district illegally photocopied versions of books at inflated prices. At the time Susan Ross was in charge of the Title I program, which received federal money to help disadvantaged students, and her husband was her supervisor.

The couple is scheduled to stand trial beginning April 7.

Federal investigators said they came across Smith's operation while investigating the Rosses.

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