The woman who ran the now-closed state store in Frackville did not steal money from it or the Shenandoah store, a Schuylkill County jury decided Wednesday.
After deliberating less than an hour, the jury of seven men and five women found Loren F. Wright, 41, of Frackville, not guilty of two counts each of theft, receiving stolen property and tampering with records.
Wright wept tears of joy while the jury pronounced its verdict, which ended a two-day trial over which President Judge William E. Baldwin presided.
Frackville borough police alleged Wright stole $2,279.99 from the 500 W. Oak St. store while she was its general manager between February 2013 and February 2014.
Shenandoah police alleged she stole $1,387.36 between Feb. 19, 2013, and March 25, 2014, from the store in the borough.
However, Dennis L. Houser, Lebanon, a certified public accountant, fraud examiner and forensic accountant, testified Wednesday that the evidence did not point to Wright as the perpetrator of thefts at either store.
“It is pure speculation” that Wright committed any of the purported thefts, he said. “There are other possible explanations.”
Unreported breakage of bottles, undetected shoplifting and mistakes in compiling the inventories at the stores are the most prominent alternative explanations, Houser testified.
One unexplained factor was that there were 389 bottles of liquor on the shelves that are not in the inventory, Houser said.
“Those were errors,” he said. “I doubt very much that someone carried 389 bottles of alcohol into the Frackville store.”
District Attorney Christine A. Holman said in her closing argument that no one disagreed that the Frackville store experienced higher losses than normal during the time in question. Wright was to blame for those losses, according to Holman.
“Ms. Wright controlled the inventory,” Holman said. “There was no oversight.”
Holman also said the same type of manipulation occurred in Shenandoah as in Frackville, and Wright was the common factor.
“It’s not like they had a target on her,” Holman said.
However, Chief Public Defender Michael J. Stine, Wright’s lawyer, successfully argued that prosecutors simply did not produce enough evidence to support a conviction.
“This is a paper case but the paper isn’t there,” he said in his closing argument.
Stine said the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board records do not contain sufficient evidence to prove Wright did anything wrong, and that the prosecution witnesses could not vouch for the correctness of the two stores’ inventories.
“The problem they have ... they’re not good inventories. They’re not good record keeping,” he said. “That’s not a good business model.”
Stine also said none of Wright’s superiors ever told her that she could not do things the way she did them.
“They never disciplined her. They never tried to correct the error,” he said.
He also said that prosecutors had to reduce the number of allegations against Wright, adding that this called into question the reliability of the investigation.
After the verdict, Stine said his client was relieved about the ending.
“Ms. Wright maintained her innocence from the day she was first approached by the representatives of the Liquor Control Board,” he said. “She has no criminal record, so a conviction would have been devastating to her.”
Holman said she did all she could in prosecuting the matter.
“We brought the case to the jury, where it belonged, which is what justice is all about,” she said.