Former cemetery manager charged

Matt Baide | Aug 31, 20230

A former office manager for Shelton Memorial Park has been arrested and charged with financial crimes related to the cemetery dating to at least 2017.

According to an affidavit of probable cause obtained by the Journal, Shelton Police arrested Dustee Sage Munro, 45, Aug. 16 on charges of first-degree theft and money laundering.

Munro’s initial arraignment before Judge Monty Cobb was Monday in Mason County Superior Court, where she pled not guilty. The pretrial is scheduled for Oct. 23 and the trial is scheduled for Nov. 14.

According to the affidavit, MACECOM reported May 23 that money had been stolen by a prior employee of Shelton Memorial Park. Shelton Police met with Shelton Cemetery President Jack Huggins and Melissa Fenton, office manager at the Shelton Memorial Park office.

Huggins said Fenton was hired in November 2021 and replaced Munro, who worked for Shelton Memorial Park from September 2010 to November 2021. Fenton said after a few weeks of work, she started to notice discrepancies with the accounting records. She advised Huggins of her findings.

Huggins went to the Shelton Cemetery Association board and requested $12,000 to have a forensic audit done of all finances from 2013 to 2021, and the audit was completed May 17.

According to the affidavit, the audit concluded a scheme of asset misappropriation was used. The theft of cash and products would fall under asset misappropriation and cash can be further classified as cash larceny or skimming. Cash larceny is when cash is taken after it is documented in accounting records and skimming is when cash is taken before it is recorded and the audit determined both schemes were used with incoming cash.

According to the affidavit, a forensic auditor completed a bank analysis of Munro’s bank statements associated with the case. The auditor found $570,423.39 was deposited into a Munro account from April 2013 through December 2021 and the documented cash or suspicious deposits amounted to $130,874.11 in Munro’s personal bank account. Of the suspicious deposits, money documented as “cash” on the bank statement amounted to $44,330 and an additional amount of $86,544.11 was described as deposit or multiple deposit.

Our Community Credit Union started documenting the deposit tender method of cash versus check in the bank statement description in 2020 and prior to that, are only described as “deposit” or “multiple deposit.”

When comparing the documented missing cash to amounts deposited into Munro’s personal account, $41,771.60 directly match up to cash from customer payments, according to the declaration. A pension check payable to OCCU for $812 had written in the memo someone else’s name that was deposited into Munro’s bank account.

Munro also created a company called Creating Harmony Essential Oils LLC, according to the declaration. A total of $10,745.81 was deposited into the company’s account from September 2015 to December 2021, and of that money, $8,400 was flagged as suspicious. On Jan. 13, 2016, $5,000 was deposited into the company and on Jan. 26, that same amount was transferred to Munro’s personal bank account.