4-year sentence, .9 million payback in MSU sorority theft

STARKVILLE, Miss. (AP) — A woman has been sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison and ordered to pay nearly million in restitution for embezzling money from a Mississippi State University sorority.

The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reports that Betty Jane Cadle, 75, of Oxford, pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud in April. U.S. District Judge Glen Davidson sentenced her to 45 months in prison Friday and ordered her to pay .9 million restitution to the Kappa Delta chapter at MSU.

Cadle was the treasurer for the corporation that oversaw the Starkville sorority.

Prosecutors said she would order things for the sorority and then reimburse herself.

As the children’s clothing store she ran in Oxford started having cash flow issues, she added some to the reimbursement, she told the judge.

“When I would get the reimbursements, I started adding a little extra to them. I thought I was taking out a loan and would pay them back,” she said.

U.S. Attorney Parker King said Cadle never tried to pay the money back in a fraud that lasted eight years. She stole an average of 5,000 a year, even as the sorority chapter was struggling financially.

“She was purposely unclear. Whenever anyone asked a question, she would condescendingly shut them down,” said Kaylie Watts, the KD chapter president 2019-2020.

In 2019, after Cadle’s sudden resignation, a new treasurer found financial records in shambles.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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